Overview

• Teacher shortages and resource constraints in many regional and low-income schools restrict offerings of advanced and extension HSC courses
• Data from the 2024 HSC shows participants in advanced and extension subjects achieve disproportionately high rates of band five and six results, with 14% of metropolitan students in top bands versus just 2% in outer regional and remote areas
• Students unable to access rigorous subjects at their home schools increasingly enrol through distance education or transfer to better-resourced schools to meet university prerequisites
• The NSW Education Standards Authority reiterated that no HSC course inherently guarantees a top band and encouraged students to pursue alternative study pathways when direct offerings are unavailable
• Experts caution that high top-band clustering in certain subjects reflects the intrinsic motivation of enrolled cohorts rather than an inherent scaling advantage