St Catherine’s 2009 HSC results are excellent and we are delighted with the performance of our 88 girls who sat at least one HSC examination this year. Three students are completing their HSC on Pathways, over two or three years, and one student was an accelerant in an individual subject.

The HSC is a rigorous programme in which a student must demonstrate her knowledge and skill over a range of assessment tasks throughout the HSC Course and in the HSC examination. Student achievement is measured against standards which are divided into six ‘Bands’ with the highest being Band 6 (marks of 90 and above).
 
Over 50% of our HSC cohort gained marks in the top Band in one or more subjects and received an honourable mention on the HSC Distinguished Achievers list.
 
We are delighted to report that Crista Khong was 6th in Economics and 10th in English Extension 1 in addition to having been 2nd in Music Extension in 2008. Crista, along with Danielle Young, gained marks over 90 in at least 10 units of study and will receive Premiers’ Awards for All Round Achievers.

In the HSC Examination eight subjects (Aboriginal Studies, Ancient History, Design and Technology, English as a Second Language, Geography, History Extension, Music 2 and Japanese) were at least 10 marks above the State examination mean and nine subjects were between five and 10 above the State mean. 

Our top ATAR for 2009 was 99.95 attained by Crista Khong. This is the top ATAR possible and equivalent to a UAI of 100.Over 20% of all St Catherine’s students had an ATAR over 95 and 35% of our students were over 90.

A long tradition of excellence in the creative arts continued with the nomination from the HSC examiners for the inclusion of students’ works in the HSC Exhibitions and Performances of outstanding works for Music, Visual Arts and Design and Technology.

With an average 2009 ATAR in the 80’s, it is clear that many St Catherine’s students achieve results far beyond those that might be predicted from their standardised test on entry to the School. An independent analyst observed that St Catherine’s results have improved steadily over the past five years with very significant gains being made for the majority of students over their time at St Catherine’s. Again, comparing the 2009 cohort’s HSC results with their performance in the School Certificate it is obvious there has been a significant improvement over Years 11 and 12. Our middle achievers have shown spectacular improvement in their studies. This would indicate that our commitment to profiling our students, tailoring subject choices to suit individual needs and setting each student appropriate challenges, all work together to ensure that there is continued growth and development.

St Catherine’s students studies over 31 different HSC courses at school and several also studied courses at TAFE, Saturday School for Languages and Open High School. We have continued our pattern of having large numbers of girls make a commitment to study higher levels of Mathematics, which is against the trend in many schools. Similarly, the Sciences, in particular Physics and Chemistry, have a larger number of candidates at St Catherine’s than many independent girls’ schools.

• In the English Literacy test, 68.80% of our students gained marks in the top two Bands as opposed to only 40.59% across the State.
• Over 30.87% of our students gained marks in the top two Bands in Mathematics compared to 24.04% in the State.
•  In Science, 50% of our students gained marks in the top two Bands while only 36.20% of students across the State achieved this result.
• In the History component of Australian History, Geography, Civics and Citizenship, 53.48% of our students gained marks in the top two Bands compared to 23% in the State. In Australian Geography, 41.85% of St Catherine’s students achieved marks in the top two Bands compared with 27.60% in the State.
• The Computing Skills Test results revealed that our students have gained a high level of competency. Over 75.58% were judged Highly Competent and the rest were Competent.