The Hunter A Survey Of Our Lifestyle And Industry 2007-08

Newcastle Herald

Thursday June 26, 2008

EVERY morning when the school bell rings, almost

100,000 students take to their desks in Hunter

schools. That?s not counting the more than 50,000

students enrolled across Hunter TAFE's 15 campuses, or

the 26,000 at Newcastle University, including more that

3500 international students from around 100 different

countries.

And these students achieve so many things, from perfect

UAI scores in the Higher School Certifi cate, to building

robotic dogs to beat the rest of the world in robo-soccer or

helping produce the Academy Award-winning animated

fi lm Happy Feet.

There are about 70,000 state school students in the

Hunter, 60 per cent in primary schools and the remaining

40 per cent in secondary classes. There are about another

17,000 students across 57 Catholic schools, and the 27

independent schools in the valley, including six special

schools catering for students with disabilities, have about

8100 students, with the largest, Hunter Valley Grammar and

St Phillips Christian College at Waratah, about 950 students

each.

Among them all, this year about 9000 children kicked off

kindergarten.

That?s a lot of school shoes and uniforms. And homework.

Figures at the start of this year show the decade-long

trend away from the state school system is continuing, with

the non-government school sector bursting at the seams in

its bid to keep up with demand.

Last year, Association of Independent Schools figures

showed 42 per cent of NSW's Year 12 students were from

a non-government school, and around the same time

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed overall

government school enrolments in the Hunter fell by 2.2 per

cent between 1997 and 2007.

Newcastle Grammar School has grown by 5.2 per cent

since 2003, while the Bishop Tyrrell Anglican College at

Fletcher has had a 10.5 per cent increase in kindergarten

enrolments since 2005. The valley?s Catholic school system

has grown by 3.75 per cent since 2004.

There are plans afoot for a number of school developments

in the valley, including the Newcastle-Maitland

Catholic diocese?s hopes to build a primary school at

Thornton North and a high school at Black Hill.

A $25 million plan to build a private school at Kurri Kurri

appears to have been put on hold until next year, as Independent

Colleges Australia has met with rezoning application

delays. It is hoped construction on the college ? which

will cater for more than 1500 students from childcare,

through pre-school and up to year 12, with 130 staff ? could

begin at the end of the year.

On a smaller scale, a Montessori lower primary school is

planned for a housing estate to be built in Shortland, while

there has been community concern over a proposed Exclusive

Bretheren school for up to 125 students at Barnsley.

TAFE offers a broad range of studies across the Hunter,

with campuses at Belmont, Cessnock, Glendale, Hamilton,

Hunter St, Kurri Kurri, Maitland, Muswellbrook, Newcastle,

Scone, Singleton and Tomaree.

As well as its 26,000 students, Newcastle University has

about 800 academic staff for its 85 undergraduate and 150

postgraduate programs.

The university, which now among its campuses has one

in Singapore, is consistently ranked in the top 10 universities

in Australia for research and last year the respected

Shanghai Jiao Tong University's international rankings

placed Newcastle in the world?s top 100 for engineering/

technology and computer sciences.

According to its list of highlights for 2007, the university

hosts the only Australian-based researcher in the "world's

hottest 10" - cancer researcher Professor John Forbes

- listed by the Thomson Scientifi c Science Watch Newsletter

for 2005-06.

Put to the test

Last year was a bumber HSC year for the Hunter where

a record number of students achieved more than 90 per

cent in their subjects.

When it came to tallying how the Hunter schools rated

(with credits calculated on the number of instances where

students achieved a score of 90 or more in a subject), a

number of schools starred by registering more than 50

credits.

Four schools totalled more than 100 credits: Merewether

with 297 credits from 168 Year 12 students, St Francis

Xaviers's College with 197 credits from 454 students, All

Saints St Mary's Maitland with 126 credits from 265 students,

and Newcastle Grammar School with an impressive

106 credits from just 94 students.

Schools scoring more than 50 credits included Hunter

School of Performing Arts (65), Great Lakes College, Tuncurry

(63) and Warners Bay High School (52).

Hundreds of students across the region recorded University

Admission Index (UAI) scores of 90 or more ? at

Merewether High 11 students scored 99 plus ? but only

one Hunter student was among 21 around the state to hit

the perfect UAI of 100 ? Ellese Cotterill, from Newcastle

Grammar.

OUT IN THE WORLD

It's not all about finding the cure for the common cold or

curing cancer - some education fi nds a lighter purpose.

The film Happy

Feet took out the 2006

Academy Award for best

animated feature fi lm

and found world-wide

acclaim, and four recent

Newcastle University

graduates were part of

its success.

Working across Australia,

the United Kingdom

and the US, Kacy

Durbridge (communications graduate) was production

supervisor for lighting composition and FX; Graeme Mc-

Girr (communications) was a lighting technical director;

Andrew McDonald (industrial design) was a modelling

supervisor; and shader writer Yasser Hamed (mechanical

engineering) was involved in the films research and

development of artists' tools.

On another front, the university's robotic dogs, wittilly

called the NUbots, have taken on the world at robotic

soccer at the RoboCup competition in the last few years,

winning the World Cup in 2006 in Germany and fi nishing

second last year in the US.

The "dogs" give the students a practical environment

to research machine learning, robotics and control.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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