Some of the media reports on the start of the Higher School Certificate exams last week noted that this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the first HSC in 1967.

That first HSC was really the final step in the long process of implementing the ‘Wyndham scheme’. Named after its chief architect, Sir Harold Wyndham, Director-General of the NSW Department of Education from 1952 to 1968, the scheme involved a whole range of reforms to secondary education. The addition of a year of secondary schooling — from five to six years for a full secondary course — along with the introduction of the School Certificate and Higher School Certificate qualifications, were only the best-known of the many elements of the scheme.

That first HSC was a long time in coming. A committee chaired by Wyndham worked from 1953 to 1957 to develop its blueprint for reform. The NSW Government took four years to accept the recommendations, passing the necessary legislation in 1961. The first HSC cohort of 1967 started their secondary schooling under the new curriculum in 1962. Since there were still four cohorts going through school under the old system, the two systems ran in parallel until 1965. Thus, the last cohort under the old system, after starting secondary school in 1961, sat for their Intermediate Certificate in 1963 and their Leaving Certificate in 1965.

Theoretically, there would have been no final year cohort in 1966. In practice, at Newington and undoubtedly in schools across NSW, a number of students from the ‘Year of 1965’ returned to repeat their Leaving Certificate in 1966: repeating a year was much more common under the old system. Some of the 1961 starters repeated twice to enable them to sit for that first HSC in 1967.

When the Class of 1967 (incorporating 1966 and 1968) gather for their 50 Year Reunion this Saturday, among their memories will be making history as the ‘guinea pigs of the first HSC’.

David Roberts
College Archivist