Few would be surprised to learn that to most common given names of students sitting this year’s exams were Joshua, Thomas, Jessica, Jack and Lachlan, but the most common surnames are a celebration of our multicultural society.

While Smith is still a very common (sorry, popular) surname, coming in at second on the list, the remainder of the top five places are filled by Nguyen, Lee, Tran and Chen.

In other figures from this year’s exams, there were 49,272 students based in Sydney and 27,054 students from regional NSW.

There were 406 students from outside NSW this year.

As the only compulsory subject, English was naturally the most popular choice followed by mathematics (58,624 students), biology (18,361), business studies (18,093), personal development, health & physical education (17,399), studies of religion (14,748), modern history (11,349), chemistry (11,295), legal studies (10,606) and physics (9586).

Japanese, French, Chinese, Italian and Spanish were the most popular languages among students.

With the exams done, however, students must now play the waiting game until results are distributed on Thursday, December 13.

THE new Glenray Industries building on the corner of Browning Street and the Mid Western Highway is rising from the ashes after fire destroyed the premises earlier this year.

Anyone driving past will notice the multi-coloured steel structure that has been erected by Dave Pennells and his team from Inland Building and Construction.

But have you ever wondered why they are coloured? Well, it was Dave’s brainchild with the intention of making the interior of the building more welcoming, bright and appealing for the Glenray workers.

Certainly something different, but definitely a good idea and great to see progress on this development going so well.