The HSC has been examined in NSW since 1967 [1]. Versions of both Ancient and Modern History have been an optional part of the HSC curriculum in one form or another since that time. Perhaps more interestingly, the apparent 'popularity' of HSC History courses with students has fluctuated over time.
I have designed the following graphs (all quite simple) to begin teasing out some of the trends within HSC History between the years 1968 (the second cohort of HSC students examined) and 2018 (the last cohort to have been examined under the previous NSW HSC syllabi) – a nice, round 50 year period.
At this stage, I am making no attempt to explain the data such as increases and decreases in the size of the cohorts that are easily observable. I am also not offering these graphs as authoritative in any way. There are still a number of important gaps in the raw data I have had time to collate. I have not, for example, provided a breakdown of gender within the cohorts and I do not have the overall figures for total HSC candidature for some of the years covered in GRAPH 3.
What follows is meant to provide only the most general insights into what has happened with the overall size of the student cohorts taking 2-Unit Ancient or Modern History over the past fifty years.
All of the raw data came from the information published by the Board of Studies/NESA [2].
GRAPH 1: Ancient and Modern History at a decade glance
The first graph is the most basic and also a little misleading. This collates the data for students enrolled in 2-Unit Ancient and Modern History at ten year intervals in the period 1968 - 2018.
The two courses this tracks were the only 2-Unit History courses prior to the 1990s and they were again the only 2-Unit History courses from the early 2000s to 2018. During the 1990s, however, other 2-Unit History courses were added and these have not been added to GRAPH #1 (but they have to graphs 2-3 below).
Graph 1:
GRAPH 2: All 2-Unit History Course Alternatives
The following graph includes the data I have found so far for all alternative 2-Unit History courses in the HSC. As GRAPH 2 demonstrates there were four other course variations for Ancient and Modern History at different points throughout the 1990s including Ancient History (General), Modern History (General), Ancient History (Personalities and their Times) and Modern History (People and Events).
GRAPH 2 clearly shows that although these alternative courses took students away from Ancient and Modern History cohorts, they never achieved more enrolments than the original two courses (although Ancient History Personalities and their Times came close during the mid-late 1990s). The alternative course numbers were reasonably high at many points suggesting that the courses were popular alternatives to the Ancient and Modern 2-Unit courses.
The following graph collates data for every year between 1968 and 2018 so there is a little more nuance to the story it suggests.
Graph 2:
GRAPH 3: All 2-Unit Ancient and Modern History Cohorts and the total HSC candidature (1968 - 2018)
The final graph is incomplete but tries to use the data from GRAPH 3 and map this broadly against the total number of students sitting the HSC. I have not been able to find data for every year during the 1990s yet but the overall trend is reasonably clear.
Graph 3:
Questions
The aim of collating this data has not been to draw conclusions (yet). Instead, the aim is to begin raising some questions. These include:
How popular has 2-Unit History been in the HSC over the past fifty years?
What changes to enrolment patterns for 2-Unit History are identifiable over this timeframe?
What possible explanations are there for the variations over time?
If you have any insights to the data outlined above, it would be great to hear from you. Please feel free to contact me to offer your ideas, suggestion or information/data I may have missed.
Endnotes
[1] See here for some basic history of the HSC.
[2] For example, see the data for 1967 - 1970 here.