science

Hurlstone Agricultural High School

Hurlstone Agricultural High School is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hurlstone Agricultural High School rather than just read about it. In short: Hurlstone Agricultural High School (HAHS, colloquially as Hurlstone Ag) is a government-funded co-educational academically selective and specialist secondary day and boarding school, located in Glenfield, a south-western suburb of Sydney, in the Macarthur region of New South Wales, Australia. HAHS is the oldest government boarding school in New South Wales.

Key takeaways

Hurlstone Agricultural High School belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hurlstone Agricultural High School to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hurlstone Agricultural High School from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hurlstone Agricultural High School (HAHS, colloquially as Hurlstone Ag) is a government-funded co-educational academically selective and specialist secondary day and boarding school, located in Glenfield, a south-western suburb of Sydney, in the Macarthur region of New South Wales, Australia. HAHS is the oldest government boarding school in New South Wales. Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School, Yanco Agricultural High School and Hurlstone Agricultural High School are the state's only public selective and agricultural schools that also include a co-educational boarding school. The 112-hectare (277-acre) Hurlstone Agricultural campus includes classroom blocks, an operational farm, sporting facilities and student accommodation.

History

Hurlstone was established as a boys-only school in 1907 in Hurlstone Park, approximately ten kilometres southwest of Sydney, at the present site of Trinity Grammar School. The land used to be owned by a Pitt St. Minister, Reverend John Graharn, and when he wished to return home to England in 1874, he sold the land to John Kinloch, a teacher and one of the first graduates of the University of Sydney. He named the land Hurlstone Estate, after his mother's maiden name and set up his own school on it in 1878 which he called the Hurlstone School and College. Four acres (approximately 1.6 hectares) of land were turned into a house, school, cricket and gymnastics ground, and sixteen acres (approximately 6.5 hectares) of land were for recreation and a pony run. Some of the original subjects at Hurlstone included:

English Grammar and Composition Reading Aloud Mathematics Physics Bookkeeping Gymnastics Surveying French Resident boarders originally paid 150 pounds per year (not adjusted to inflation).

Hurlstone Agricultural Continuation School In those days, most students completed their schooling after primary school and students at Hurlstone Agricultural Continuation School (as it was known at the time) studied there for only two years. In 1926, the school moved to its present site in Glenfield, approximately 42 km southwest of Sydney (between Liverpool and Campbelltown) and adjacent to Glenfield railway station. By then its student numbers had grown from 30 in 1907, to 148. The school supported government policy to promote productivity in the agricultural sector through the training of boys in all aspects of agricultural sciences and farm management.

Macarthur Agricultural High School; co-educational enrolment For a brief period in the early 1940s, it was known as Macarthur Agricultural High School in honour of wool-grower John Macarthur, but it soon reverted to its previous name. Hurlstone was a boys' school until 1979, when the decision was made to become co-educational.

Sale of school farmland In 2008, the New South Wales Government declared 140 hectares of Hurlstone's farmland "surplus" and proposed the sale of the land, leaving the school with just 20 hectares. The announcement was met with immediate public protest and the formation of a local community group Save Hurlstone Educational and Agricultural Property (SHEAP) eventuating in a government inquiry into the proposed sale and proceeds of the sale. There was further pressure against the plans when the National Trust heritage listed the school in late 2009. The government inquiry resulted in a recommendation of the sale of a small parcel of school land with the proceeds intended to help upgrade school facilities. On 18 November 2015, there was another proposal to sell the land the school and its farm operated on.

Principals

Population

Enrolment at the school is dependent on selective examinations of Year 6 students from across the state. New students coming in later grades have to sit a similar exam. As of 2026, 934 students are enrolled at HAHS.

Campus

Hurlstone features a fully functional farm and a commercial dairy. Animals on the farm include: beef and dairy cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, and chickens. Clarke House is a heritage listed building which houses Hurlstone's memorabilia museum. The school also hosts a memorial forest and cairn on Roy Watts Road, past the boarding school. Established in 1950, it is believed to be Australia's first living war memorial, with a gum tree dedicated to each of the 600 students from the school who served in WWI and II. Currently, ANZAC and Remembrance Day ceremonies are held at the memorial forest. As part of the 2008 mini-budget, the New South Wales Government declared 140 hectares of the school to be surplus to educational needs and the land will be sold in 2011. However, due to a strong public protest against this action, an inquiry was led into process of selling approximately seven-eighths of the school. As a result, Mal Peters, the Inquiry Chair, recommended the school's agricultural sector to be upgraded in order to reflect current industry practice and standards due to it being an economic, wise and important public investment for the people of NSW as it supplies young scientists with the knowledge for the ever declining, but demanding agricultural sector of the world. In 2020 a new school called Hurlstone Agricultural High School was to open at Western Sydney University, Hawkesbury. The existing school in Glenfield would be renamed Roy Watts High School (after Hurlstone alumnus Roy Watts) and would remain fully selective but would no longer be an agricultural school. However, this decision was cancelled in December 2019. The farm land would have been converted to a new public school as well as housing and a shopping centre.

Academics

NAPLAN Results

HSC Results

Subjects

Year 7 All subjects are mandatory.

Agriculture English Geography History Mathematics Music PDHPE Science Technology Mandatory Visual Arts Wellbeing

Year 8 All subjects are mandatory.

Agriculture English Geography History Japanese Mathematics Music PDHPE Science Technology Mandatory Visual Arts

Year 9 All subjects are mandatory unless stated otherwise.

Agriculture Commerce (Elective) Computer Technology (Elective) English Food Technology (Elective) Geography History Elective History Industrial Technology (Elective) Japanese (Elective) Mathematics Elective Music PDHPE PASS (Elective) Photographic and Digital Media (Elective) Psychology (Elective) Science Textiles Technology (Elective) Visual Arts (Elective)

Year 10 All subjects are mandatory unless stated otherwise.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hurlstone Agricultural High School

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hurlstone Agricultural High School claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hurlstone Agricultural High School before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hurlstone Agricultural High School ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hurlstone Agricultural High School

In research: Hurlstone Agricultural High School appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hurlstone Agricultural High School in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hurlstone Agricultural High School is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1907 establishments in Australia, Agricultural schools, Boarding schools in New South Wales, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hurlstone Agricultural High School outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hurlstone Agricultural High School in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hurlstone Agricultural High School means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hurlstone Agricultural High School out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hurlstone Agricultural High School in simple terms?

Why does Hurlstone Agricultural High School matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hurlstone Agricultural High School?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hurlstone Agricultural High School.