Normanhurst Boys' High School (colloquially known as Normo) is an academically selective

secondary Secondary may refer to: Science and nature * Secondary emission, of particles ** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products * The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding i ...

day school A day school — as opposed to a boarding school — is an educational institution where children and adolescents are given instructions during the day, after which the students return to their homes. A day school has full-day programs when compar ...

for boys, located in the suburb of , on the

Upper North Shore The North Shore is a region within Northern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, generally referring to suburbs located on the northern side of Sydney Harbour up to Wahroonga, and suburbs between Middle Harbour and the Lane Cove ...

Sydney, New South Wales Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountains ...

, Australia. Consistently ranked as one of the nation's top schools academically, it was ranked seventh in the state based on NSW Higher School Certificate (HSC) results in 2020. Established in 1958, the school caters for approximately 730 students from

Year 7 Year 7 is an educational year group in schools in many countries including England, Wales, Australia and New Zealand. It is the seventh full year (or eighth in Australia) of compulsory education and is roughly equivalent to grade 6 in the United ...

Year 12 Year 12 is an educational year group in schools in many countries including England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It is sometimes the twelfth year of compulsory education, or alternatively a year of post-compulsory educa ...

, who are accepted on an academic basis. Based on entry standards, it is one of the top ten schools in New South Wales. The school celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2018.

History

In 1957, five schools made up the Hornsby school site, located on the Pacific Highway: a boys' primary school and a boys' junior technical school on the eastern side, and an infants school, a girls’ primary school, and a girls’ domestic science school on the western side. On 30 November 1957, the three western schools were destroyed by bushfires. Over the 1957-58 Christmas holidays, the three schools were relocated into the facilities of the boys' technical school, and the three year groups of boys were moved to a newly built but unopened school at Normanhurst. From its opening in 1958 until 1993, Normanhurst Boys' High School operated as a

comprehensive school A comprehensive school typically describes a secondary school for pupils aged approximately 11–18, that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, in contrast to a selective school system where admission is res ...

. In 1993, the

Government of New South Wales The Government of New South Wales, also known as the NSW Government, is the Australian state democratic administrative authority of New South Wales. It is currently held by a coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party. The Governmen ...

marked Normanhurst as one of several high schools allowed to select students by academic achievement. The first intake of "selective" students was made up of those starting Year Seven in 1994, with a new intake of Year Sevens each year, until the school became fully selective in 1999. Presently, Normanhurst is one of seventeen fully selective schools in New South Wales.

Academics

Like other academically selective schools, Normanhurst is known for its high academic achievement in the Higher School Certificate. The following table shows the school's rankings relative to other schools in the state. The rankings are based on the percentage of exams sat that resulted in a placing on the Distinguished Achievers List (highest band result) as shown by the

Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards The Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards NSW (abbreviated as BOSTES) was the Government of New South Wales, state government education Government agency, agency in New South Wales, Australia. It was formed on 1 January 2014 follo ...

(BOSTES NSW). In 2010, the school was ranked 14th in the state.

Demographics

The school's students are one of the most socio-economically advantaged in

NSW ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

, in terms of the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage score, with 82% of boys at the school from families in the top quarter of society. As a result, the school has been mentioned as part of an ongoing debate about whether Australian selective schools accept enough students from less well-off families, and if selective schools create social inequality.

Structure

Normanhurst Boys' High School is not far from its "sister" school,

Hornsby Girls' High School Hornsby Girls' High School is a government-funded single-sex academically selective secondary day school for girls, located in Hornsby, a suburb on the Upper North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1930, the school' ...

, with which joint curriculum and extra-curricular activities are held, such as plays and musicals.

Entry

Normanhurst Boys High School is an academically selective high school and accepts a relatively small intake of 120 students in

. It is one of the top ten schools in

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

, based on entry standards. Offers of admission and matriculation into the school in

are made on the basis of academic merit, as assessed by the Selective High School Placement Test, sat in

Year 6 Year 6 is an educational year group in schools in many countries including the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It is usually the sixth year of compulsory education and incorporates students aged between ten and eleven however some chil ...

. A number of students may be accepted into Years8 through to 11, through direct application to the school and a subsequent internal selection process, consisting of a consideration of character, extracurricular activities and academic ability. An interview is then required before a final offer is made.

Houses

The school has four houses, the names of which are based on figures in the Aboriginal

Dreamtime The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal mythology, Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Ja ...

. Pupils compete under their respective house in sport and academics. The houses are:

Facilities

The school has an area of 6.3 hectares, and is within five minutes walk of

Normanhurst railway station Normanhurst railway station is located on the Main Northern line, serving the Sydney suburb of Normanhurst. It is served by Sydney Trains T9 Northern Line services. History Normanhurst station opened on 21 November 1895 as Hornsby. On 1 May ...

. Facilities include a sporting field, four tennis courts and several basketball courts. The campus includes the hall, library, music and drama centre as well as a careers office. There are two gates of entry, one reserved for senior boys and one for junior boys. Each student has a laptop with wireless internet access. The drama centre was finished in 2017, as part of an extension to the school's main building. (1)Normanhurst Boys High School

Sport

Normanhurst Boys High School is a member of the North West Metropolitan Sports Association. The sporting year is divided into two seasons, summer and winter, and boys are able to select sports they wish to play throughout the semester. All boys must play sports until Year 11, and are encouraged to play grade sport, representing the school in inter-school competitions. Sports offered include: *

Association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

(soccer) *

Baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

Badminton Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players pe ...

Basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

Cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

Futsal Futsal is a football-based game played on a hardcourt, hard court smaller than a football pitch, and mainly indoors. It has similarities to five-a-side football and Indoor soccer, indoor football. Futsal is played between two teams of five players ...

Hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...

Lawn bowls Bowls, also known as lawn bowls or lawn bowling, is a sport in which the objective is to roll biased balls so that they stop close to a smaller ball called a "jack" or "kitty". It is played on a bowling green, which may be flat (for "flat-gre ...

*Oz-tag *

Rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

Table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

Tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

Volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...

Water polo Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with the ...

The school also holds annual swimming and athletics carnivals, as well as an annual cross-country event.

Co-curricular activities

The school offers numerous clubs and societies to students. These include: *Chess club *Creator's club *Debating and public speaking *Concert band *Environmental society *Jazz ensemble *Mooting and mock trial *Robotics and programming club *Social justice society *Stage bands (first and second) *String ensemble *Choir The school participates in the

Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme The Duke of Edinburgh's Award (commonly abbreviated DofE) is a youth awards programme founded in the United Kingdom in 1956 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, that has since expanded to 144 nations. The awards recognise adolescents and young ...

, as well as running its own secondary school army cadet unit, 226 Army Cadet Unit. In conjunction with

Hornsby Girls High School Hornsby Girls' High School is a government-funded single-sex academically selective secondary day school for girls, located in Hornsby, a suburb on the Upper North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1930, the school' ...

, a (supposedly annual) musical production is put on, for which boys can audition and participate in. An annual art exhibition is also run by the school. Normanhurst runs school camps for grades 7–11, notably a camp for

students to

Jenolan Caves The Jenolan Caves (Tharawal language, Tharawal: ''Binoomea'', ''Bindo'', ''Binda'') are limestone cave, limestone caves located within the Jenolan Karst Conservation Reserve in the Central Tablelands region, west of the Blue Mountains (New South ...

and the Central West of New South Wales. The week-long excursion has been running in various forms since 1959. On the camp, boys are accompanied by mentors from senior years. The school also offers overseas cultural trips to London, Paris, Rome and New York. Normanhurst is also home to a

FIRST Robotics Competition FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition. Each year, teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors work during a six-week period to build robots capable of competing in that year's game that weig ...

team, Team 4739: Ctrl F5, formerly Thunderbolts Robotics, founded in 2010 with their rookie year in 2013, they gained many years experience and was part of the initial 5 Australian teams founded by Team 3132: Thunder Down Under, and the oldest public school team still competing. They have also entered in the FIRST Tech Challenge, gaining first and also won the Duel Down Under in 2019, run by Team 3132.

Motto

The school's motto, ''Know Thyself'', is a Delphic maxim which is attributed to

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...

. The phrase has been expounded by Aeschylus, Socrates and Plato, among others. It is given as ''nosce te ipsum'' or ''temet nosce'' in Latin.

Principals

The following individuals have served as principals (formerly headmasters) of the school:

Notable alumni

Alumni Alumni (singular: alumnus (masculine) or alumna (feminine)) are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for grou ...

of Normanhurst Boys' High School are commonly referred to as ''Old Boys''. Some notable Normanhurst Old Boys include:

Business

* David HillChairman and CEO of

Fox Sports Fox Sports is the brand name for a number of sports channels, broadcast divisions, programming, and other media around the world. The ''Fox Sports'' name has since been used for other sports media assets. These assets are held mainly by the Fo ...

, creator of the

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

channel, former chairman of

Fox Broadcasting The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an American commercial broadcast television network owned by Fox Corporation and headquartered in New York City, with master control operations and ...

Media, entertainment, and the arts

Rowan Cahill Rowan Cahill (born 1945) is an Australian radical historian and journalist, with a background as a teacher and farmhand, who variously worked for the Australian labour movement, trade union movement as a rank and file activist, delegate and public ...

historian and journalist *

Vince Melouney Vincent Melouney (Maloney) (born 18 August 1945) is an Australian musician, singer and songwriter best known as an official member of The Bee Gees from 1967 to 1969 during the group’s initial period of worldwide success. Prior to joining Be ...

guitarist, vocalist and songwriter, former member of the

Bee Gees The Bee Gees were a musical group formed in 1958 by brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio were especially successful in popular music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and later as prominent performers in the disco music era in ...

Medicine and science

* Michael Barber mathematician, physicist, academic * Jordan Nguyenbiomedical engineer and inventor *

Ian Plimer Ian Rutherford Plimer (born 12 February 1946) is an Australian geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne. He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He has been criticised by climate scientists for misinterp ...

geologist and academic *

John Shine John Shine (born 3 July 1946) is an Australian biochemist and molecular biologist. Shine and Lynn Dalgarno discovered the nucleotide sequence, called the Shine-Dalgarno sequence, necessary for the initiation and termination of protein synth ...

biochemist and molecular biologist

Politics, public service, and the law

Peter Andren Peter James Andren AM (28 August 1946 – 3 November 2007) was an Australian politician. He was an independent member of the Australian House of Representatives from March 1996 until October 2007, representing the electorate of Calare, New Sou ...

former

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

Member for Calare in the

Parliament of Australia The Parliament of Australia (officially the Federal Parliament, also called the Commonwealth Parliament) is the legislature, legislative branch of the government of Australia. It consists of three elements: the monarch (represented by the ...

(1996–2007) * Peter Baldwinformer

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

Member for Sydney in the Parliament of Australia (1983–1998), former Minister for Employment and Education Services (1990), former Minister for Higher Education and Employment Services (1990–1993), former Minister for Social Security (1993–1996) * Doug Jones, international arbitrator *

Peter McClellan Peter David McClellan is a retired judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal who served between February 2013 and February 2018. McClellan was the Chief Royal Commissioner of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual ...

, Chief Judge in Common Law of the

Supreme Court of New South Wales The Supreme Court of New South Wales is the highest state court of the Australian State of New South Wales. It has unlimited jurisdiction within the state in civil matters, and hears the most serious criminal matters. Whilst the Supreme Court i ...

(since 2005), Chief Royal Commissioner of the

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was a royal commission announced in November 2012 and established in 2013 by the Government of Australia, Australian government pursuant to the Royal Commissions Act 1902 t ...

Sport

* David Brown former Australian rules footballer *

Rodger Davis Rodger Miles Davis (born 18 May 1951) is an Australian professional golfer. Career Davis was born in Sydney. He turned professional in 1974 and spent his regular career playing mainly on the PGA Tour of Australasia and the European Tour. He won ...

professional golfer * Neil Maxwellformer

and Australia A cricketer *

Richard Pybus Richard Alexander Pybus (born 5 July 1964), is an English-born cricket coach. He coached the Pakistan and Bangladesh national teams, and currently serves as the Director of Cricket for the West Indies Cricket Board. He has held this post sinc ...

cricketer and former Pakistan cricket coach *

Murray Barnes Murray Barnes (16 January 1954 – 31 December 2011) was an Australian soccer player. Barnes played for the Australian team for six years, captaining the team nine times. Playing career Club career Barnes played for a number of junio ...

former

Socceroos The Australia men's national soccer team represents Australia in international men's soccer. Officially nicknamed the Socceroos, the team is controlled by the governing body for soccer in Australia, Football Australia, which is affiliated with ...

captain *

Robert Wheatley Robert Wheatley (born 17 January 1962) is a former Australian football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form ...

former

Socceroo The Australia men's national soccer team represents Australia in international men's soccer. Officially nicknamed the Socceroos, the team is controlled by the governing body for soccer in Australia, Football Australia, which is affiliated wi ...

(1981 to 1990) *

Todd Woodbridge Todd Andrew Woodbridge, OAM (born 2 April 1971) is an Australian former professional tennis player and current sports broadcaster with the Nine Network. Woodbridge is best known for his successful Doubles partnerships with Mark Woodforde (n ...

sports broadcaster for

Nine Network The Nine Network (stylised 9Network, commonly known as Channel Nine or simply Nine) is an Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by parent company Nine Entertainment and is one of five main free-to-air television netw ...

and former professional tennis player * Aleksandar Vukicprofessional tennis player

References

External links

*
North West Metropolitan Sports Association
* {{Public high schools in Sydney, state=autocollapse Educational institutions established in 1958 Boys' schools in New South Wales Public high schools in Sydney 1958 establishments in Australia Pacific Highway (Australia) Selective schools in New South Wales

History

Academics

Demographics

Structure

Entry

Houses

Facilities

Sport

Co-curricular activities

Motto

Principals

Notable alumni

Business

Media, entertainment, and the arts

Medicine and science

Politics, public service, and the law

Sport

See also

References

External links