Higher School Certificate students: returning students
ACE 8059
Last Updated: 13 March 2013
A student who leaves the NSW system before the completion of eligibility requirements for the Record of School Achievement and returns after the start of the Preliminary course (eg an exchange student) may enter the Preliminary course if the principal is satisfied that the student has studied subjects broadly comparable to requirements for the Record of School Achievement while outside the NSW system. The details of the content of courses studied should be made available to the principal, along with certification that the student has satisfactorily studied such courses while absent from the NSW system.
A student who leaves the NSW system after the start of a Preliminary course and returns in a subsequent year, normally before 30 June, may be eligible to enter for the Higher School Certificate that year if:
- the principal is satisfied that the student has achieved the Preliminary course outcomes while outside the NSW system; and
- the school can provide an assessment mark.
With regard to (a), the principal may make a judgement about whether a student’s schooling experience has been broadly comparable to that attainable through the NSW system. The principal could request documentation about courses or subjects studied and/or results obtained by the student while outside the NSW system. Useful documents could include course or subject guidelines, school reports or work samples.
With regard to (b), the student’s ranking in the course based on assessment tasks should be obtained by ‘meshing’ a returning student’s available assessment task marks with the set of marks for others in the same course. In general, students should not have to do tasks they missed as a result of schooling experience outside the NSW system.
If it is not possible for the school to provide an assessment mark, the student is not eligible to enter for the Higher School Certificate examination for that course in that year.
Where an HSC course requires work to be submitted as part of the Higher School Certificate external examination requirements (eg Visual Arts and Music), students will have to comply or may be ineligible for a result in that course. Schools should check the complete list of requirements for each course in the relevant syllabus package.
For VET courses, all requirements, including indicative hours, must be met for students to be awarded a course.