By Daniella White
A record number of NSW students opted to complete the International Baccalaureate (IB) this year over the HSC, with inner west schools Santa Sabina College and Newington College among those with students receiving “perfect” scores of 45.
The results come as the NSW government formally lifts its ban on public schools offering the alternative to the HSC. However, it is likely to be years before the IB is introduced into any NSW public schools due to the lengthy accreditation process.
Santa Sabina College students Tanisha Chari and Rochelle Dias achieved perfect scores of 45 in the IB.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
Some 827 NSW IB students across 19 schools received their results on Tuesday morning, ahead of HSC results being released on Wednesday.
Newington College in Stanmore had three students with a perfect score of 45: Isaac Holmes, Minh Nguyen and Hugh Smith. A further four received a score of 44. The school would not disclose the total number of students who took the IB, but last year had a cohort of 70.
Nguyen is in Japan with his family and found out his results in a hotel room in Kyoto.
“I’d woken up early out of stress so it was a huge relief when I saw my score, and I was cheering with my parents and brother out of happiness,” he said.
“My two close friends, Hugh and Isaac, also got 45, so it was fun being able to celebrate together straight afterwards, though not in person.”
Santa Sabina College in Strathfield had two students – Tanisha Chari and Rochelle Dias – who received a score of 45. A further two got a score of 44, out of 32 students enrolled in the program.
Dias said she was too stressed to look at her results so got her family to open them for her.
“I stopped and waited to see their reaction to see if they needed to let me down easy,” she said.
“I couldn’t believe it, it was surreal.”
Chari said she opened her results exactly at 10am and was pleasantly surprised by them.
“I was planning on doing the HSC but did a last-minute switch,” she said.
“It’s quite rigorous and challenging, especially the breadth of what you do.”
Santa Sabina’s IB dean, Julie Harris, said she was a fan of the program for how well it prepares students for university and liked that it didn’t have HSC’s “awful” ranking system.
Isaac Holmes, Hugh Smith and Minh Nguyen from Newington College all received perfect 45s in the IB.
Kambala’s Sasha Laragy is also among the students to receive a score of 45. One Trinity Grammar School student, Stefano Furlan, scored 45, and a further eight scored 44 among a cohort of 137.
A score of 45 converts to an ATAR between 99.75 and 99.95.
Westbourne College Sydney’s IB dux was Dylan Marrick, who scored 43.
The internationally recognised IB program runs over two years, and students’ work is externally assessed through a mix of examinations (typically 75 per cent) and school-based assessments.
Students also complete a 4000-word research essay, a 100-hour subject on the theory of knowledge, and must also participate in creative, sporting and service activities.
St Andrew’s Cathedral School had three students – Rama Chadda-Harmer, Callista Christabel and Ezekiel Surjadinata – with scores of 44, which equates to an ATAR range of 99.3 to 99.6.
At North Shore school Redlands, five students from a cohort of 92 received a score of 44.
At Ravenswood, two students – Olivia Jin and Lily Graham – received scores of 44 out of 45.
Jin said the program was challenging because of the need to multitask and complete extracurricular activities.
Alongside her academic activities, Jin also completed three hours of painting a week to fulfil the creativity component of the course.
“The work-life balance has been the most difficult thing to manage,” she said.
Jin chose the IB over the HSC partly because of its international recognition and has applied to study economics at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. She has also applied for a law and commerce degree at Sydney University and UNSW.
Then-opposition leader Chris Minns in 2023 promised a Labor government would lift the ban on public schools from offering the IB to students in a bid to attract and retain families of bright students in the public system, bringing NSW into line with other states such as Queensland.
The ban was only formally lifted this week, and from Wednesday schools can register their interest in offering the program alongside the HSC.
An internal Department of Education paper finished in 2017 but never acted upon recommended state schools offer the IB to give students access to an academically rigorous HSC equivalent.
It would “help attract and retain families of bright students in the public school system”, the proposal said at the time, while estimating it would cost a public school between $44,000 to $300,500 to run the program.
Education Minister Prue Car said the move to allow public schools to offer the IB brought NSW into line with other states.
“While offering a new program like IB isn’t an easy process, interested schools can now consider it,” she said.
“Schools offering the IB DP have to go through rigorous accreditation processes and must have the teaching capacity and resources to deliver the program successfully.”
Across Australia, 3045 students completed the IB in 2024, a 15 per cent increase on last year.
The largest IB Diploma cohort was in NSW with 827 students, followed by Victoria with 823, Queensland with 760, South Australia with 341, ACT with 184, Western Australia with 57, and Tasmania with 53 candidates. Additionally, a few Australasian candidates completed the diploma in Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
The IB does not share assessment data to prevent rankings and school comparisons.
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