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Twenty years ago, the Herald’s annual HSC school rankings were published under the headline: “State school blitz of top HSC spots.”
Dominating the higher ranks were 19 selective schools. James Ruse had the highest rate of band sixes, its 10th table-topping in what became a 27-year reign. Hornsby Girls placed second. North Sydney Boys, hoping for its third consecutive first-place ranking when the 2025 HSC results are released on Thursday, was sixth.
But non-selective schools also contributed to 2005’s blitz. Alstonville High, in northern NSW, placed 57th, with its students coming first in the state in English extension 2 and history extension. It was one of 12 comprehensive public schools in the top 100 in 2005.
Last year, the same 19 selective schools were in the top 100. As for comprehensives, just seven made the list.
A comparison of the Herald’s HSC top 100 schools lists shows the number of non-selective public schools among the state’s top performers halved between 2002 and 2024.
The top-achieving comprehensive public high schools are also coming from a smaller, socioeconomically privileged geographic area.
While the top 100 lists of the early 2000s had non-selective schools from across the city – from Homebush to Springwood; Canley Vale to Vaucluse – as well as a handful of regional schools in the mix, every public comprehensive in the top 100 over the past three years has been a metropolitan Sydney school, north of the Harbour Bridge.
The six comprehensives to maintain a top 100 ranking between 2022 and 2024 were: Willoughby Girls (55th in 2024), Cheltenham Girls (57th), Epping Boys (60th), Balgowlah Boys (64th), Killara (90th) and Cherrybrook Technology (94th).
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Former NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli said the trend reflected an increasingly divided school system. The OECD has identified Australia’s education system as among the most socially segregated in the world.
“This concentration of advantage and concentration of disadvantage is the biggest issue in Australian education,” Piccoli, a former director of UNSW’s Gonski Institute for Education, said.
“Independent schools and selective schools are increasingly sucking the highest performing students out of all the other schools, both Catholic systemic schools and certainly public comprehensive schools.”
While they still dominate the HSC top 10, public selectives are increasingly bested by high-fee privates and academically selective Islamic schools. There were 19 public schools in the top 30 schools in 2005, compared to 13 last year and 10 in 2023.
Piccoli said, as education minister, he was shocked by the socioeconomic advantage at some selective schools. “They are some of the highest SES schools … it’s like a free private school,” he said.
North Sydney students celebrate their success in 2024.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
University of Technology Sydney social scientist Christina Ho, whose research focuses on school choice, particularly among Asian migrants, said the rise of tutoring had “a lot to do” with the concentration of advantage in selective schools.
“The students who get into selective schools have families who are resourced to prepare them for the test; spending thousands on tutoring,” she said.
Ho said the availability of school performance data – especially NAPLAN results on the MySchool website – had made it easier for parents to compare schools.
“Especially for middle-class parents, there is an expectation that you are making an informed decision about where to send your child,” she said.
“If you’re not, it’s almost seen as negligent parenting. And that culture of ‘choosing’ a school has become much more mainstream: real estate websites even now tell you what school catchment a house is in.”
This, Ho said, meant schools in disadvantaged areas became more disadvantaged, as comparably advantaged local parents prioritise test preparation for selective schools and private school scholarships, or send their children to low-fee privates.
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“Those with the means are exiting schools that are seen as undesirable or declining,” Ho said. “Then that’s a vicious cycle where, the more it loses high-achieving students, the local school is left with the residual.”
In contrast, Ho said advantaged, desirable comprehensives were able to invest in extracurriculars and other drawcards such as gifted and talented streams, with the support of parents’ contributions.
Christine Del Gallo was principal of such a school – Northern Beaches Secondary College’s Mackellar Girls Campus. She retired two years ago after 18 years at the school, during which time it routinely made the top 100 list.
Del Gallo said the school’s HSC results were “definitely a drawcard” for local parents to keep their children in the comprehensive system.
A former deputy head of the Secondary Principals Council, Del Gallo said “the school culture of high expectations and wanting to provide success for students, in any school, comes from the top”.
“If your kids are going to do well in the HSC, there has to be a culture in the school that academic success is important,” she said.
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