Andrew Attard’s mother suspected there was something different about her son when he was just three years old. One afternoon, Andrew picked up a new book. And he simply started reading it aloud.
“I didn’t teach him to read. I went back and looked at the book. I would point to the words and he would tell me what it was,” his mother Julia Lewthwaite said.
Andrew is now 15 and will be the youngest person in the state to complete the HSC this year.
15-year-old Andrew Attard, who attends Rose Bay Secondary College, is the youngest student sitting the HSC this year. Credit: Rhett Wyman
It comes as little surprise to those who have met him on his educational journey: at the childcare centre he preferred talking to the staff because his erudite topics of conversation baffled fellow toddlers. When he started school at Bondi Public at the age of four, Andrew sped through young adult novels while the other children grappled with the letters of the alphabet.
“In kindergarten, my parents got me to sit in on first-grade classes. And then I was accelerated the next year. And then again a few months later,” Andrew said.
“Primary school didn’t have much education going on. I just blitzed through it in half the time as everyone else.”
When he got to fifth grade, his mother wrote to all the eastern suburbs private schools asking to let him sit their scholarship tests, but none would enrol accelerated students.
At just nine, he entered Rose Bay Secondary College.
HSC exams begin in October.Credit: Wolter Peeters
“It wasn’t that great when I first got here, it’s gotten better though,” he said.
He had some friends he knew from primary school and outside school he also has friends from Mensa, of which he is a member.
One in 30,000 students is as smart as Andrew. That equates to about two students of the roughly 70,000 students entering public school every year, meaning most schools are not equipped to give them the specialist support they need, his mother said.
“It is hard because there isn’t a lot out there,” she said.
“If there is no diagnosis beyond being profoundly gifted, there is no support.”
When he’s at home, he likes gaming and reading science books. He admires Harvard astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. In his bedroom are books by cosmologist Max Tegmark and theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli.
For the HSC, he is studying biology, advanced maths and chemistry and English standard. He hopes to study chemistry further at university.
In the final term of his schooling, he’s looking forward to studying subatomic particle physics.
“You have to sit through seven boring modules to get to the good bit,” he said.
More than 74,000 students are studying one or more HSC courses in 2023. There will be 124 exams over 18 days. The results will be released on December 14.
The HSC Study Guide will appear in Monday’s Herald and at smh.com.au/hscstudyguide2023.
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