Top Queensland state school reveals Year 12 results

Queensland’s top state high school has revealed the incredible ATAR results its students obtained in 2021, despite the state government’s efforts to keep student scores secret.

Queensland’s biggest state high school has publicly shared its stellar Year 12 ATAR results for 2021, despite the state government’s efforts to keep student scores under lock and key.

As previously reported by The Courier-Mail, for the second year running school-by-school Year 12 results have not been publicly released under the new Queensland Certificate of Education system.

Instead, the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority has only released state-level data, meaning parents were only given a snapshot of the entire 2021 cohort’s performance.

While many of the state’s top private schools made the decision to share their results when they were released in December, until now the state’s major public school ATAR results have remained unknown.

However Brisbane State High School have now publicly shared their ATAR results in an extensive report, as they did last year, to openly celebrate their students’ remarkable academic achievements.

Brisbane State High School has released its ATAR results for 2021.

Their results confirm their place as one of the top academically-performing high schools in the state, alongside Queensland’s most prestigious and expensive private schools.

The report reveals six of their students landed a perfect score of 99.95, the second highest number in the state and behind only Brisbane Grammar School who had 11 students land a top score.

A further five BSHS students received a 99.90, while 21 of the top 150 students in Queensland – those who achieved a 99.75 or higher – were from BSHS.

Overall 53 per cent of students achieved an ATAR of 90 or above – a higher percentage than multiple major private schools including Anglican Church Grammar School (who had 50 per cent of students achieve a 90 or above) Brisbane Boys’ College (44 per cent), Clayfield College (43 per cent), Marist College (40 per cent), Ormiston College (49 per cent), and on a similar level to St Joseph’s College Gregory Terrace (53 per cent).

In a message to parents, BSHS Executive Principal Wade Haynes said there “were some very excited students as they received their results and offers”, saying the results were possibly “record-breaking”.

“Our students had a very good year. I’d like to congratulate them on their hard work over an extended period of time, while acknowledging that they had excellent support from classroom teachers and their mentors,” he said.

“We had six students achieve an ATAR of 99.95 and 21 of the top 150 students in Queensland.

“Based on the best available conversion, we had 76 students with an ATAR equivalent to an OP1. That would eclipse the best result in this state ever.”

One BSHS one student achieved an incredible three perfect scores across six subjects.

Overall BSHS had 545 students graduate, with 522 receiving an ATAR.

Of those students, 447 – or about 85 per cent – shared their results with the school.

Under the new system, students can choose whether to share their ATAR results with their school, so school statistics often do not reflect 100 per cent of a school’s cohort.

The report also revealed the school graduate’s university plans.

The majority chose to undertake further study in Queensland, with 234 students accepting places at the University of Queensland, 116 at the Queensland University of Technology and 57 headed to Griffith University.

The most popular courses were Engineering, Nursing, Business, Law, and Finance and Economics.