Each December, a new cohort of graduating HSC students receive their final marks from their assessments and examinations across their chosen subjects.
It is one of the year’s most popular stories with our readers, who follow along on our live blog as students across the state open their results, learning the fruits of their study of the material – the theorems, the Shakespeares – they have immersed themselves in for two years.
HSC students across the state deserve a chance to extend themselves by aspiring to tackle more challenging subjects.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
For the HSC class of 2027, the process begins now. Across the state, tens of thousands of year 10 students are poring over course guides, deciding which units they will take through to their final years of schooling.
Today, the Herald is publishing its first in a series of stories about HSC subject selection.
In today’s story, education reporter Emily Kowal is looking at the bigger picture: subject availability across the state, and how it can affect students’ results.
Various factors – the size of a school’s cohort, teacher qualifications, school infrastructure – affect what HSC subjects a school can offer.
As the Herald has previously reported extensively, these inequalities mean subject availability is more limited in regional, rural and low socio-economic schools.
Last year, 14 per cent of students in major cities achieved a top band result in their HSC, compared with just 2 per cent of students in outer regional or remote parts of NSW.
Data shows the majority of HSC students who study advanced and extension versions of their courses, including maths, English, science and history, score in the top two HSC bands. Last year, English Ext 1 had the highest proportion of students scoring an E4 band, with 41 per cent of students achieving a top score.
However, limited resources and teacher availability at some schools, including regional, rural and low socio-economic schools, means students can be locked out of taking those more rigorous subjects that traditionally scale higher.
While it is not reasonable to expect every school to offer every subject, it is disappointing that some schools fail to offer the extension levels of English and mathematics to students.
Even if there is limited perceived demand, such decisions restrict students’ ability to achieve academically. If students do not think there is an option to study English or mathematics at a higher level, they will not strive to reach that level.
This has flow-on impacts on opportunities for study and opportunities after school: many STEM degrees require extension mathematics as a prerequisite, and the scaling benefits of having taken extension courses on a student’s ATAR are evident: in English Extension 1, almost all students will receive a mark in the top 2 bands.
Over the coming days, the Herald’s reporters will examine the role that individual subject selection can play in a student’s final results. We hope this information is useful for students, parents and, indeed, teachers as the HSC class of 2027 begins its journey towards the senior years of school.
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