Instead of gaming the system, let s help schools lift their game
Instead of gaming the system, let s help schools lift their game
Normal text size
For the best part of a century,
The Sydney Morning Herald has published every student’s end-of-school exam results, good or bad. Teenagers would mill outside the old Broadway presses late at night, waiting to intercept the inky pages.
A version of that tradition will continue on Monday, when the
Herald will print the names of the state’s highest achievers.
Julina Lim, from Cabramatta High School, got an ATAR of 99.95.
Credit:Facebook
Each year, the paper’s education team also analyses public data to find out which schools produced the largest number of top performers, information for which many parents are increasingly hungry as private school fees top $40,000 a year in Sydney.
Advertisement
Akina Li trembled with anxiety on Friday morning as she counted down the minutes and seconds until her ATAR appeared on the screen. The 18-year-old Pymble Ladies College student from Eastwood was hoping for 99.95 to secure her chances of getting into medicine at the University of Sydney.
She has wanted to be a doctor or dentist since she was three, and in recent years set her sights on neurosurgery. The moments Akinaâs computer took to load her result were brief but agonising. Then she and her mother burst into tears.
Akina Li and her mother, Ying Liu, react as Akina gets her 99.95 ATAR result.
Class of COVID: Girls triumph over boys in NSW s HSC 2020 NSW girls have completely smashed the boys in the HSC first in course results in one of the most challenging years on record.
Education by CHRISTOPHER HARRIS
Premium Content
Subscriber only The girls have completely smashed the boys in the Higher School Certificate first in course results, in one of the most challenging years on record. It comes as this year s Year 12 class has been struck by coronavirus school closures, bushfires and bomb threats. A total of 44 boys came first in their course this year - about half of the total number of 82 girls who placed first in their course.
Save
Normal text size
Very large text size
Wendy Hu thought she was on the end of a prank call when she received the news she’d come joint-first in the state for the Higher School Certificate in 1980. It wasn’t until her phone rang off-the-hook from newspaper reporters and film crews turned up at her front door that reality sank in. I was then asked if I d release my name to the media. We were so naïve in those days. All of a sudden, I was on all the free-to-air TV channels, the former Killarney Heights High School student recalls.