The co-ed trailblazers, the lockdown cohort: Sydney students reflect on finishing Year 12

More than 75,000 high school students finished 13 years of schooling this week, as the countdown begins for their first HSC exams on October 16. As they wave goodbye to this chapter of their lives, we asked students from four public high schools across Sydney to reflect on their experiences.

The new co-educational high school

Year 12 is typically the year of lasts – but, for Alper Cetin, it has been a year of firsts. This year, his school, Randwick Boys, merged with Randwick Girls, forming the new co-educational Randwick High School.

While he was initially “pretty surprised” by the decision to combine the single-sex schools, he has enjoyed his HSC year at a co-ed campus.

“It was chaotic at first, but we have settled in now. It’s a lot of new experiences, and exciting really – a great way to spend my last year of school,” he said.

For its first year, Randwick High kept most year 12 classes as single-sex, although from 2026 all lessons will be co-ed. Alper said the merger has brought a new energy to the school.

In fact, it reminds him of where it all began, in primary school.

“Being in a co-ed school has a nostalgic feeling and I love it,” he said. “At lunchtime I always play soccer in the field, and that’s an opportunity to play with the girls. It brings back that competitive spirit I had in primary school.”

Alper, who hopes to study physics at university, said finishing school has brought up a “real mixture of emotions”.

“I’m panicked and excited,” he said.

The inner-city school

Isla Hackett was among the first 140 students to walk through the gates of the long-awaited Inner Sydney High when the new high-rise school opened six years ago.

“My parents had me on wait lists for co-ed private schools like Reddam and International Grammar, but they ended up deciding on Inner Sydney,” she said.

“Having that co-ed public school opportunity was really great for them because I have two younger siblings.”

Inner Sydney, on the site of the old Cleveland Street Intensive English High School, has added a new year group each year since 2020. Isla’s cohort will be the first to sit the HSC.

Despite the remote learning disruptions of her first years of high school, she said being part of a new school has allowed the students to help shape the school’s culture and build a sense of community.

“We started feedback Fridays in our first year so we could offer suggestions, we also helped design the senior school uniform for year 11 and 12s. The school really listened to us.”

Year 11 and 12 have been schooling highlights, she said: “Being able to select my HSC subjects and focus on sciences has been great because I want to study sport and exercise science at university.”

The high-rise school

On her first day of year 7, Arthur Phillip High student Ashley Clavecillas vividly remembers staring out at the city horizon.

It was 2020, and the $325 million high-rise school in Parramatta had just opened, making it NSW’s first public high-rise high school – and its most expensive.

“We would always look out these windows, and you could see the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was an amazing sight,” Ashley recalled.

Six years later, and that view has become harder to see.“It’s obscured by buildings now,” she said.

Her year group will be the first year 12 cohort to graduate from the 17-storey high-rise school. “I am feeling very sentimental,” she said.

The class of 2025 were the COVID kids – their first year of high school had barely begun before they were plunged into online learning and lockdowns. While it was a big deal at the time, for Ashley, it now feels like a distant memory. Over the past few years the school has developed a vibrant community.

“It was a lot of online learning, a lot of having to adapt, but now we are doing events,” she said.

“The community that we’ve managed to build, both between my friend groups as well as people between years, I’ve built such a strong connection with my juniors through volleyball, SRC.”

She said students from lower grades have been approaching Year 12s all week, congratulating them on finishing school and wishing them well. “In that moment, I realised we’ve built something in these past few years,” she said.

The alternative school

Katherine Lowbeer wore a school uniform for the first time this week - but it wasn’t her own. The year 12 student at alternative school Lindfield Learning Village borrowed one from a nearby school as part of her school’s “steal a uniform” muck up tradition. For Katherine, it was a rare taste of conformity in a school defined by freedom.

Her school’s approach to education is unique: there are no uniforms, and students call their teachers by their first name. They also don’t have a bell.

“We just move to the next class when we know it’s the end of class,” she said.

“Not having a bell means we are always a bit more aware of what is going on around us. It’s not that hard to track the time … we are still able to move to classes just without needing any direction.”

If you ask Katherine, the freedom she has received at her school, especially in year 12, is the reason she’s progressed so far. She said Lindfield students are empowered to take control of their learning.

“We have a little bit of homework, but not as much as other schools do,” she said. Katherine used this freedom to study HSC extension one and two maths in year 9, going on to complete university courses in year 11 and 12.

“I was able to do more courses this year because I didn’t have to worry about maths. And it’s also given me less pressure because I was able to have more subjects I could drop if I needed to,” she said.

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