By Lucy Carroll and Nigel Gladstone
Some Sydney schools charging fees of less than $7000 have achieved HSC results that match or surpass expensive rivals where parents pay five times that amount, a Herald analysis shows.
As private schools prepare to lift fees by up to 9 per cent next year, the latest HSC scores reveal several low-fee schools have similar or greater shares of students in the top performance band as their high-fee counterparts.
Students at St Clare’s Waverley, where tuition for year 12 is about $6800, achieved similar success rates to their high-fee counterparts. (From left) Zoe Tindale, Marianna Quintero Zuniga, Violet Henson, Sienna Gillespie and Olivia Dobbi.Credit: Steven Siewert
Catholic systemic all-girls school Brigidine College in Randwick, which costs about $6000 a year, had a similar success rate to nearby Kincoppal-Rose Bay, where fees exceed $43,000 for year 12.
Another eastern suburbs girls’ school, St Clare’s College in Waverley, which charges about $6800 for tuition, had a better success rate than Tara Anglican School, Loreto Normanhurst and International Grammar School, all with fees above $31,000.
The analysis compares schools’ success rates – marks over 90 as a percentage of entries – with the latest school fee schedules for year 12.
Northholm Grammar in Sydney’s north-west, which ranked 31st this year and costs about $23,000, outperformed several higher-fee schools. The private school’s principal, Chris Bradbury, said many private schools performed well in the HSC every year, but the value added to a child’s academic growth would vary widely.
“We think carefully about where we are investing time and resources, which, for us, is in delivering teaching excellence and pastoral care,” he said.
Private schools are now releasing 2025 fee schedules and many have blamed price hikes on the knock-on effect of state school teacher wage rises and high costs of maintaining facilities.
Several Sydney high-fee private schools are planning major building upgrades. The King’s School has lodged plans for a campus overhaul worth $170 million over the next decade, while Scots has spent nearly $80 million on a library that resembles a Scottish baronial castle. MLC School has proposed a $108 million extension to its existing aquatic centre.
At Northholm, the co-ed school has dedicated the past five years to building teacher knowledge in explicit instruction and rolling out a teacher observation program.
In year 12, students are set weekly assessment tasks or a test for each subject that helps teachers understand how each child is performing, and how to spot gaps and set goals, Bradbury said.
“Our families are spending on private education, and we are conscious of the fact we have an obligation to ensure families are not also outlaying large amounts on outside tutoring and coaching.
“We have started doing more handwriting and completing tasks in class as part of a systematic formative assessment program,” said Bradbury, who spent a decade teaching at the King’s School before starting at Northholm in 2019.
The bulk of the top 300 schools in the HSC rankings teach students from the highest quartiles of socio-educational advantage. This year, nearly half of the schools in the top 300 were private. Just eight of the schools taught students in the lowest socio-educational quartile.
St Clare’s College students with English teacher Mary Prince.Credit: James Brickwood
Of those, public schools such as Granville Boys High School and Dapto High School have climbed several hundred places in the rankings in the past few years. Granville Boys has tripled its success rate since 2022.
The state government releases information only on students who achieve a top band 6 or E4, the equivalent of marks over 90. These students tend to also be the most advantaged because they have well-educated parents who can support their schooling.
Unlike higher-fee schools planning expansions, St Clare’s principal Ann Freeman said the school had about 760 students and, with a relatively small campus, it was unlikely to expand.
The school was the top-ranked Catholic systemic school in this year’s HSC. It had a similar success rate to many high-fee schools including the $40,000 Frensham, which is five times the cost of St Clare’s.
“The teachers work together, constantly collaborating and planning lessons. They volunteer to be mentors to final year students,” Freeman said.
Freeman, an advocate for all-girls education, said year 12 was “hard work and when students realise there are no quick fixes, the better it is and the more they start enjoying it”.
“We don’t have the finances for extensive facilities or a huge level of co-curricular activities. We put all our effort into good teaching,” she said.
Another Sydney Catholic systemic school, St John Bosco College in Engadine, had similar success rates to $40,000 institutions MLC School in Burwood and SCEGGS Redlands, which also offer the international baccalaureate and the HSC.
Riverside Girls High School, a public comprehensive school in Huntleys Point, ranked just head of MLC Burwood this year. Killara High School outperformed Stella Maris in Manly, an all-girls private that charges nearly $20,000.
The second highest-performing Catholic systemic school this year was the all-boys Parramatta Marist High, where fees are about $6600. It eclipsed higher fee schools including the Hills Grammar, which charges $33,600.
HSC students from Parramatta Marist High, Jean-Paul Boutros, Joseph Baini and Vinz Danganan. Credit: Wolter Peeters
Parramatta Marist head of teaching and learning Adam Hendry said the school had lifted the proportion of students achieving marks between bands four and six over the decade, and the school encourages students to take the harder maths courses.
“This year, we had about 20 students taking extension 2 maths. They won’t all get a band six, but we have a sizable group taking the subject,” he said.
“Many of our students are doing two or three units of maths in year 11. That helps them stay in advanced English and keep chemistry and physics in year 12.”
The school also runs an intensive learning intervention program for year 7 students to “get them up to speed” once they enter high school.
Al Noori Muslim School in Greenacre and Al Faisal College, both of which require students to sit an entry exam and which have fees under $4000, also performed better than many high-fee schools.
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