From the Deputy Headmaster

It gives me great pleasure to welcome back our top performing students from the Class of 2022 to our Academic Muster. 19 students placed within the top 1% of the nation; these results are a testament to the talent, determination and ingenuity of this impressive group of young men, their families and their teachers.

Every year we need to remember three things on occasions like this:

One: Whilst we honour the incredible success of the students as individuals and as a collective, our high achievers are representatives of the effort, growth and resilience of the wider cohort.

Two: There are amazing stories of growth, effort and resilience in the cohort that are not visible here.

Three: Over 10% of our cohort regularly place in the top 1% of the nation – that is abnormal! It is incredible, and it is a privilege to witness, but it is not normal. We should remember, though, that part of the job of a good boy’s school is to normalise exceptional behaviours in young males that are tricker to normalise in the wider world. If we do this properly, we are going some way to fulfilling our mission.

I was personally interested this year in knowing what makes our 2022 high performing students tick. There were two data sets I was interested in that connected this group. Firstly, I noted the correlation between academic performance and their VIA character strengths. Students self-assess their own character strengths to understand who they are as a human and as a learner.

The 19 young men showed off an appropriate diversity in their character strengths: hope, love of learning, humour, gratitude, leadership, love, judgement and honesty.

The diversity is encouraging, as it reminds us that success looks like a lot of different things when it comes to high performance and that one size does not fit all when it comes to anything in education.

Two character strengths, though, stood out amongst the group: Kindness and curiosity. What a wonderful world we would live in if we were all a little kinder and more curious!

Secondly, I wished to know what contributed most to this group’s academic success beyond the excellent teaching resources available to them or the hours of study they put in. I wanted them to nominate the one thing that tipped them over the edge and into that 1% of the nation. There was a pattern in all 19 responses. To get into the 1% of the nation bracket these 19 young men identified that having friends with high expectations and maintaining a rich co-curricular life helped them achieve their academic excellence.

In conclusion, to dominate academically there are 4 things to remember: Be kind, be curious, surround yourself with the right friends and – every now and then – put the books down.

Congratulations to the 19 high performing students of the 2022 cohort:

• William Begg (FLL) ATAR 99.95 (SACE), Dux of the School
• Anay Pradhan (WDK) ATAR 99.95 (SACE), Proxime Accessit
• Daniel Jesudason (HWK) – ATAR 99.90 (SACE)
• Nicholas Koh (HWK) – ATAR 99.90 (SACE)
• Duc Pham (FRR) – ATAR 99.90 (SACE)
• Karan Sethi (SHT) – ATAR 99.90 (SACE)
• William McConnel (FLL) – ATAR 99.80 (SACE)
• Luca Paull (SHT) – ATAR 99.80 (SACE)
• Tan (Tommy) Vo (YNG) – ATAR 99.80 (SACE)
• Rajiv Paranavithana (FRR) – ATAR 99.75 (SACE)
• Alexander Grice (HWK) – ATAR 99.55 (IB)
• Nathan Choi (SHT) – ATAR 99.50 (SACE)
• Josip Podreka (MAC) – ATAR 99.50 (SACE)
• Yang (Oscar) Chen (HWD) – ATAR 99.40 (SACE)
• Charles Wells (SHT) – ATAR 99.35 (IB)
• Lai-Yin (Matthew) Lam (FLL) – ATAR 99.30 (SACE)
• Kyle Miller (MAC) – ATAR 99.25 (SACE)
• Kian Mylankal (FRR) – ATAR 99.10 (SACE)
• Henry Braithwaite (SHT) – ATAR 99.05 (SACE)

Nick Carter 
Deputy Headmaster (Acting)