that includes only the names and schools of students who finish in the top performance band in their chosen subjects.
Comprehensive schools including Cheltenham Girls, Killara High, Epping Boys, Willoughby Girls, Carlingford and Castle Hill High rise significantly on the average score rank, putting them among the top 30 schools with an average above 80.Last year, Cheltenham Girls ranked 93rd on only band 6s, but surges to 19th among public schools on average scores across all subjects.
Holz says school executives and teachers interrogate HSC results by subject to help the school make decisions about areas to focus on for the following year. “It’s a hugely powerful exercise,” she says. “We’ve also set aside three lessons a week when our year 7 to 9 students are purely working on their writing, analysing text types or on grammar and spelling skills,” she says.
“In 2015, we had incredibly strong results in advanced English. Since then, the whole English teaching staff has turned over, but the culture has stayed the same. There is no magic bullet, but we focus on wellbeing for all students and really promoting - and normalising - academic achievement.”, where all year 12 students produced their own posters as a reminder that studying and working hard was cool. That celebration of academic success has remained, says Meagher.