Why private girls’ school PLC Sydney is NSW’s first to offer British Cambridge A-Levels

A small group of students at one of Sydney’s priciest private schools are the guinea pigs in an educational experiment - can Aussie students master the British A-Levels, and avoid the HSC’s scaling sting in the process?

Aspirational NSW school leavers like MLC’s Fiona Feng have set their sights on the world’s best universities - and they’re ditching the HSC to get there.

Fifteen Sydney schoolgirls are set to become guinea pigs in an Australian educational experiment, as one of the city’s most expensive schools lets them swap the HSC for its British equivalent.

PLC Sydney in Croydon, which charges senior students upwards of $43,000 in tuition fees, will this year run the Cambridge International A-Level courses for girls in Year 11 and continuing to Year 12 in 2026 as an alternative to the HSC.

The Cambridge A-Levels, which are a globalised version of the highest secondary school qualification available in the UK and standard in English schools, are almost unknown in Australia, with only two other schools across the country providing the option.

PLC Sydney principal Dr Paul Burgis said while the HSC was a worthy course and the school had no intention to stop teaching it, the A-Levels offered “a deep and broad understanding” of subject matter, and past students who completed a pilot of the program had been accepted into Oxford and Cambridge.

“It’s mastery of the subject area, mastery of the topics … The Cambridge courses offer greater depth in the subjects that they offer, so they will take the students further,” he said.

Dr Paul Burgis, headmaster at PLC Sydney in Croyden. Picture: Supplied

“(But) there’s many ways to skin a cat and an education, if it becomes too focused on one program … I don’t think that’s healthy.”

The more widely recognised, but still little-known, alternative to the HSC is the International Baccalaureate, which public schools had been restricted from teaching until the ban was lifted late last year.

However, the IB comes with a price. Costs associated with running the program reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single school.

“I did invite the Education Minister … to consider Cambridge, because if the NSW government wants a system other than the HSC then Cambridge would be more economical for them than the IB,” Dr Burgis said.

Dr Burgis with Year 9 students at PLC. Picture: Supplied

For Sydney’s priciest private schools, international alternatives to the HSC are a string to their bow to pitch to prospective parents whose children have their sights set on elite British universities like Cambridge and Oxford or the Ivy League colleges in the US, including Harvard and Yale.

However, more attractive for many families is the opportunity alternative qualifications offer to bypass the “scaling” system used in the HSC to rank students and, in effect, pit them against their classmates to achieve the “perfect” university admissions rank (ATAR) of 99.95.

Entry to the world’s most prestigious universities like Cambridge in the UK is only part of the attraction, parents say.

Raw marks in both the IB and Cambridge system translate directly to an ATAR without being adjusted against the rest of the cohort, and Year 11 PLC student Syricia said the opportunity for “collaboration” rather than competition was the single biggest factor in her decision to try the A-Levels this year.

“The NESA course is rank-based, and we’re also put on a bell curve, essentially,” she explained.

“A-Levels is great because we don’t sit in a bell curve or are ranked, which means the classroom environment can be that much more exciting and healthier. It means we can work together and not worry about it impacting our final grade or where we rank.

Year 11 PLC student Syricia, 16, is looking forward to studying for her A-Levels. Picture: Richard Dobson

“Because it’s an international course, there’s also so many other resources at the end of my fingertips, whether that be online, through past papers, tutors, tips and tricks – that’s a really great attribute that we didn’t necessarily see as much with (the HSC).”

Mum Jenne hopes other schools see success in PLC’s pioneering and follow suit – including the public school system.

“It’s a privilege, as well, to be among the first to do this,” she said.

Graduate of MLC School in Burwood Fiona Feng is among more than 800 NSW school students who last year opted to study the IB, attributing her decision to her desire to pursue higher education in the United States, and favouring the rigour and critical thinking required.

Class of 2024 graduate Fiona Feng at MLC School in Burwood. Picture: Tom Parrish

Ms Feng, who spent her spare time in high school designing a music-based Chinese language course dubbed Melody Mandarin, achieved a mark of 43 in the 2024 IB diploma which will see her enrolled in computer science at California’s prestigious Stanford University.

“The IB basically prepares you to do your own thinking in uni,” she explained.

“I’m very glad I chose the IB, because if I had gone into uni without this kind of preparation, this kind of mindset that I have to take this knowledge and think about it from different perspectives … I might have struggled.”

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Originally published as Why private girls’ school PLC Sydney is NSW’s first to offer British Cambridge A-Levels