Kempsey High School student Layla Wicks was stunned when she received her marks this morning, not least because many had told the 18-year-old not to get her hopes up. Students from her school just don’t get good HSC marks, she was told.
“It did dishearten me, but I always thought to myself, ‘What if?’,” she said.
Instead, Layla woke up to band 6s in all subjects but one, and an ATAR of 97.65.
“Kids who live in the city get so much more advantage in terms of where they can go to get extra help for their studies,” Kempsey High School executive principal Simon McKinney said.
“For a young girl, she lives probably an hour upriver from the school – to do that and have such a wonderful ATAR is a credit to her and her family.”
Kempsey High School student Layla Wicks had a 97.65 ATAR.
Layla worked two jobs at a pizza shop and cafe on top of attending school, and had to study two subjects – English advanced and legal studies – by correspondence as her school didn’t offer them.
McKinney also estimates his year 12 students lost up to two weeks of school due to floods and a cyclonic storm, which tore the roof off the English department.
To help manage her time, Layla would listen to the assigned poems through her headphones or over her car’s speakers on the way to work and school.
In spite of the expectations some set for her, Layla will move three hours down the coast next year to study law after accepting an early entry offer from the University of Newcastle. She hopes to pursue family or international law.
“I’ve worked really, really hard,” she said. “I would just say even if you go to a rural or disadvantaged school where students don’t typically do well in the HSC, you still can.”
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