Firehose and boasboy, aka Richard and Nathan:
'Tech Pride' has compelled me to post this in light of the disparaging representation of Sydney Tech's HSC performance. We also realise that many people consider Sydney Tech one of 'the runts' of the Selective School heirarchy (Source: a shifty St. Georgian) and often don't know and don't care about who we are (despite the fact that we were one of 7 'foundation' schools to remain selective under the recommendations of the Vinson report - not even Ruse would remain open as a selective school), thus I feel that it is my perogative to 'embellish' the image conveyed by our 'abysmal' ranking with the following:
Keep in mind that this year, the Herald decided to adopt the Telegraph's formula when it produced its 'league table'. Under the Herald's old formula, which was to rank schools by the number of honour roll mentions, we ONLY fell five places to 19th, and we were ranked 25 under the Telegraph formula last year, so we didn't do awfully considering we had a higher-than-normal proportion of what some may call 'deadwood', or 'Joseph' (disclaimer: not his real name)
Though it seems that our grade's performance as a whole has resulted in our school's relegation to '26th', there are several factors that we have to consider when measuring our 'success' or lack thereof before we jump to the conclusion that our Tech Class of 05 was crap:
1. We are the first grade in 14 years that can boast a UAI/TER of 100 (one of us anyway)
2. Two of our students topped the state in Economics this year and in Engineering Studies in 2004, and we also dominate the state rankings, with only the likes of Ruse and Baulko and St George beating us in this arena (I counted, but don't trust my maths).
3. From early reports, it seems that our grade can also boast the most number of students with a UAI above 99, which is impressive considering the standard was set even higher this year by a reported increase in the number of 'top band' scores. We'll confirm this on Monday.
4. Our grade most probably produced the best ever English results for our school (36 according to the Herald, haven't bothered to compare it to past statistics but it's a beaut number for a traditionally maths/science focussed school) . We'll also confirm this on Monday, but Terence told me that Ms. D was ecstatic with our results.
So yeah. Tech Pride all the way!