Comprehensive girls schools have outshone their male counterparts in this year’s HSC
Who achieved higher marks in the HSC exams this year – boys or girls? The Daily Telegraph reveals if comprehensive boys schools outscored their female counterparts and there is a significant gap between the two.
NSW
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Comprehensive girls’ high schools have performed better than their male counterparts, a Daily Telegraph analysis of HSC data reveals.
Of the best performing schools which achieved a ranking between one and 400 in the state’s HSC results, only eight boys’ comprehensive high schools made the cut.
By comparison, non-selective girls’ high schools performed much better, taking out 17 spots at the top of the table.
Willoughby Girls’ High School was the top comprehensive girls’ high school ranking 67 in the results, closely followed by Northern Beaches Secondary College Balgowlah Boys’ Campus at 70.
But the results reveal Asquith Boys’ ranked behind Asquith Girls’, Randwick Boys’ ranked behind Randwick Girls’ and Liverpool Boys’ lagged behind Liverpool Girls’.
One of the biggest differences in the state was between Canterbury Boys’ and Canterbury Girls’. The Boys’ dropped from 444 in last year’s table to 531 this year, compared to Canterbury Girls’, which placed 219.
It was a similar story in Sydney’s southwest, where Bankstown Girls’ came in 313 on the table, far outranking nearby Punchbowl Boys’, which came in at 527.
Boys’ education expert Peter West said school environments were more suitable for girls than they were for boys.
“We’re not talking to the interests of boys enough,” he said. “I go into school libraries and I ask ‘where are the sections for boys, where are the special displays for boys?’ ”
“I think the schools need to sit down and look at who is disengaged and switched off
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He also said schools should not attempt to take the “wildness” out of boys.
“We have to let kids run a little bit more, we worry so much about everything they’re doing, we’re not letting their free spirits run.
“Australian kids are also very inactive by world standards, and the kids can’t settle unless they run that energy out of them.”
Blacktown Boys’ was the only school to beat its corresponding single sex school, Blacktown Girls’.
The boys’ school ranked 235 while the girls’ school came in at 287.
The analysis comes after this year’s Australian Tertiary Admission Rank data found girls had a higher median score than boys — 71.10 compared to 68.05.