Beginner’s Guide to the HSC High School Rankings

All about the HSC High School ranking guide

The High School rankings guide provides an understanding of how different schools perform in relation to each other.

These rankings provide an indication of students’ success rate of achieving Band 6 at a school.

You can find high school ranking data from 2010 onwards in this guide. Read the 2024 HSC results here.

How are the HSC High School rankings determined?

The High School rankings have been compiled using data published by NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) each year.

The rankings are calculated using the ratio of the number of Band 6 results to the number of exams sat by the school.

To calculate this ratio (referred to Success Rate) for each school, NESA uses the following information:

• • Total HSC Exams Sat: The total number of HSC courses sat from the school
  • High Scores: The total number of Band 6 results from the school

Here’s an explanation of the terms used in the High School ranking tables.

Total HSC Exam Sat

This is the total number of HSC courses sat that receive an HSC mark at a school. This does not refer to the number of students, but quite literally refers to the number of individual courses and exams sat by the Year 12 cohort of the school. As an example, let’s look at some data from the 2024 High School Rankings:

In this example, North Sydney Boys High School had 869 HSC exams sat and James Ruse Agricultural High School had 1029 HSC exams sat.

High Scores

High Scores – formerly called “Total Credits” – refers to the number of Band 6 results that students from that school achieved. Let’s see what this means for the results by looking again at the 2024 High School Rankings:

In the table above, North Sydney Boys High School had 564 Band 6 results out of the 869 HSC exams sat. James Ruse Agricultural High School had 647 Band 6 results out of the 1029 HSC exams sat. This information is then used to calculate the Success Rate of the School.

Success Rate

Success Rate is a percentage calculated from a ratio of the number of Band 6 results a school achieved to the total number of HSC exams the school sat.

Here are the 2024 results to figure this out:

If we take the number of Band 6 High Scores from the school and then divide this by the number of total exams sat we can get a strike rate for the school. This can be used to learn the percentage of Band 6 results in each cohort.

Looking at North Sydney Boys High School, for example,

This means that North Sydney Boys High School had a success rate of 64.9%.

In contrast, James Ruse Agricultural High School had a success rate of 62.88% even though it had a higher number of Band 6 results (83 more than James Ruse Agricultural High School). This is because James Ruse had a higher number of total exams sat and therefore lowered their success rate.

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Previous HSC Rankings

The final category is the Previous Ranking. This allows you to see how much a school’s position has changed in relation to others, if it has changed at all.

Let’s take another look at the table:

Here, we can see that North Sydney Boys High School has been the number 1 ranked school for two years. However, James Ruse has been ranked 2nd for two years and was previously ranked first. Looking at this, we can see that James Ruse has been decreasing over time.

Why do people care about the HSC High Schools Rankings?

High School Rankings can be used to predict the likely performance of a school in the following year, based upon its historical performance. Theoretically, you can predict a student’s potential results based upon their relative performance at a school that has consistent results.

If a school consistently performs in the top 20 and has a success rate of 50%, parents can assume that if their child is in the top 40% of the cohort they will have a statistical probability of scoring Band 6 results.

Obviously, this is not guaranteed and relies on the student’s performance throughout the year and the rest of their cohort’s performance.

Generally, high performing schools on this guide are selective schools which attract more academically driven students. Many parents use these rankings to select their preferences in their child’s Selective School applications. Admission to selective schools is predominantly based on the selective schools admissions test sat by Primary School students in Year 6 for Year 7 entry.

However, the competitive nature of some schools may not be for all students. For example, a student who struggles at a competitive selective school could flourish and achieve consistent Band 6 results at a non-selective school.

It’s important to be aware that there are other factors other than academic results when making decisions on selecting a high school.

How can I use this information?

You should use this High School Ranking information to make an informed judgement about schools. You can compare schools’ results to decide where to send your child, or to inform a decision to change schools during High School.

There are two important things to bear in mind when looking through the High School rankings.

1. Use historical data to predict a school’s future performance

The High School Rankings are not real-time information. As this information is collected at the end of the year, it does not take into account changes at a school that may have a significant impact on its results.

Just because a school has performed highly one year does not guarantee it will the following year. However, historical data can allow you to predict the future performance of the school.

For example, if we look at the 2024 results we can see that some schools have had significant fluctuations in the past while others have had consistent results:

In 2024, Penrith High School was ranked 27th. In 2016, it was ranked 32nd, and in 2015 it was ranked 29th. Penrith has had consistent rankings and because they have a Success Rate of 34.24% students in the top 30% of their cohort will have a statistical likelihood of achieving Band 6 results.

However, parents who had considered and rejected Parramatta High School because it had previous results in the 110s and 130s in previous years would have been surprised to see that they’d jumped over 30 spots in the rankings in twelve months. Students leaving in the wake of the poor performance in 2022 would be disappointed to see that it had a similar drastic improvement in marks and they left for no reason.

Meanwhile, Santa Sabina College was ranked 36th in 2023, but in 86th in 2024. That’s a significant change that could have been caused by a number of reasons, such as changes in faculty,  staff, or poor cohort performance.

To illustrate how significant the changes can be, consider this graph of the 2017 movers and shakers:

Given that the vast majority of students remain at the same school for their whole school life, past performance can give parents assurances about their child’s potential performance in the future.

But parents should also remember that schools can jump hundreds of places in the High School Rankings in a single year. Your local school could be 1 cohort away from the top 20 or even top 10 schools.

2. Use the High School rankings to see performance relative to other schools

High School Rankings provide relative information and caution should be exercised considering a school’s success without it being in relation to other schools.

In addition, Success Rate alone is an inaccurate measure of a school’s successes and failures.

To illustrate this, let’s look at the 2017 table again:

Kambala has 514 Band 6 results, which when you take into account that there were only 239 HSC exams sat by students (potentially only 87 students), that result seems great!

Should you choose a school based on the High School Rankings?

Choosing a school is a complex and challenging process with lots of variables.

Decisions should be based on the data from several years alongside other criteria.

Here are some other criteria to consider when choosing a high school:

• Your child’s strengths, weaknesses and interests
• School location, travel time
• Other offerings in terms of extra-curricular activities and sports
• School facilities
• Future plans for development

A rounded education includes more than a school’s Success Rate or rank.

For example, sending your child to North Sydney Boys High School because it is number one when you live in Baulkham Hills may leave your child exhausted from travel and could be counter-productive for their HSC success.

Similarly, if your child has sporting abilities or aspirations, sending them to a selective school that doesn’t cater strongly to sports is not going to be in their interests.

When choosing a High School you should have an in-depth conversation with your child and research prospective schools in detail. You may want to tour the school and meet some of the staff before making a decision.

What next?

• Read 2024 High School Rankings article to find out if your school was ranked in the top 100 in NSW last year.
• Read our Beginner’s Guide to ATAR and Scaling to learn about how your Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) is determined.

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