A CAMDEN Haven High School Distance Education student has topped the State in his course.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Jack Skelton, from Gloucester High School, studied Information Technology for the Higher School Certificate through the Camden Haven Distance Education Centre, achieving the best result in the course of all students in NSW this year.
Jack's teacher at Camden Haven High was Stephen Evans, who retired from teaching at the end of the 2012 school year, said school principal Margaret Hutchinson.
"He saved the best 'til last," she said.
Other Camden Haven High School students who shone in the HSC included school captain Daniel Baldwin, who achieved the school's highest Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) score of 96.7, with others notching up ATARs in the 90s being Alexandria McAlpine, 92.3, Emma Robertson, 91.8, Luke Hughes, 91.95 and Jayden Hudson, 91.1.
Jack Skelton was presented with his Higher School Certificate First in Course award by NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli at a ceremony in Sydney.
Jack, who plans to study software engineering at the University of New South Wales, said he was "pretty surprised" when told he had come first in the course.
Doing study by Distance Education is hard, Jack told the Courier, because you have to get motivated by yourself to do the reading and research.
In fact early in his distance learning experience - he studied Information Technology that way in years 11 and 12 - he received a couple of warning notices from the Board of Studies for not getting assignments in on time. If you were given too many of these notices you could be excluded from completing the course for your HSC, he said.
Clearly he took the warning seriously enough to end up excelling in the course. So he said he would recommend Distance Education to other students if they were sufficiently motivated to do the work themselves, as there is no teacher there in person to help you.
While Jack doesn't know for sure if he will get into the UNSW software engineering course, he is pretty optimistic and hopes one day to work for one of the big IT corporations such as Apple or Google.
School principal Mrs Hutchinson agreed that studying by Distance Education has its own difficulties on top of the academic challenge, and Jack's teacher had to point out to him the need for self discipline in his studies.
But Mr Evans, who taught the course, said that once Jack got the hang of the distance education requirements he knuckled down to it and richly deserved the mark he achieved.
It was an excellent result, Mrs Hutchinson said, adding that the Distance Education Centre was beneficial to all the students at the school.
Having the Distance Education role expanded the range of subjects available to the "face to face" students and benefited the teaching staff, almost all of whom taught in both modes, she said.
It means the school's 700 "local" students were joined by over 300 in years 7 to 12 studying full-time by Distance Education and another 600 to 650 studying single courses.
Camden Haven High School provides Distance Education to students in the area between Coffs Harbour and Lake Macquarie and west to Armidale and Gunnedah.
