When Dhanuka Karunaratne walked into his first Year 7 mathematics class, teacher Alix Coffa was ready.

“We had been warned,” the Monaro High School teacher said.

Ms Coffa knew her new student was gifted, but set about finding his limits.

Would Year 8 maths be too hard? Nope. Year 9? Nuh, uh.

“We tested to work out where he was and decided on Year 10,” Ms Coffa said.

With her support, Dhanuka ate up the harder material.

“He finished the Year 10 course in Year 7,” Miss Coffa said.

“It was very exciting.”

It was the launching pad Dhanuka needed and remains grateful for as he puts the 2025 HSC extension one and two maths courses behind him – at the tender age of 14.

“I felt a big confidence boost, because I knew I could actually do more,” he said.

He would push himself and his teacher.

“Dhanuka loved to pose curly questions, right when I was in the middle of something else, but he was always patient,” Ms Coffa said.

With the Year 10 course under his belt, Dhanuka was eager for more.

“I pulled out a university text book and we would work through that,” Ms Coffa said.

“He would come up with questions I had not thought of since university.”

Told Dhanuka had just completed 2025 HSC maths subjects, his former teachers at Cooma North Public School responded with ‘of course he has’.

They recalled an exceptional student in all areas, who was humble, kind and unassuming.

“He was well rounded and well liked and loved by his peers,” they said.

“He is a life-long learner - the complete package.”

Dhanuka has lived his whole life in the Monaro, with his father an electrical engineer at Snowy 2.0 and his mother a maths tutor.

“From a very early age my parents exposed me to mathematics,” Dhanuka said.

His earliest mathematical memory is of being about three years old and understanding how addition worked.

He smiled when he recalled this, but that, too, was not unusual, Monaro High School principal, James Armitage, said.

“He’s always smiling,” Mr Armitage said.

“He’s a very happy student and in almost every interaction I have with him, he is smiling.”

Dhanuka was unlikely to have been smiling in the extension two exam, which he described as ‘very stressful’, but the extension one exam, as expected, was less of a beast.

Dhanuka appreciates the structure and logic of mathematics, but has no desire to study it in its pure form at university.

“I feel most of the high school maths I have done is enough for me,” he said.

Instead, he is leaning towards engineering or a medical field.

Dhanuka has skipped a year, and will soon complete Year 10 – a trajectory that has also extended his social circle and given him friends in Years 9, 10, 11 and 12.

With HSC maths behind him, he can look forward to being able to give more attention to easy subjects next year, such as advanced english, biology, physics, chemistry, engineering and health and movement science.

Ms Coffa admires his motivation.

“This all came from him,” she said.

“No one is pushing him.”

Mr Armitage is also proud.

“He’s always been very driven from the moment he arrived, and I’m really, proud of our school community and how they’ve embraced him,” he said.

“He is interested in trying to engage in university as quickly as he can and I would love to try and to provide him with some opportunities while he is still at school.”

Now, along with much older students around NSW, Dhanuka awaits his HSC maths results, oscillating between anxiety and acceptance.

“I don’t think I could have done much better,” Dhanuka said.

“There was so much to do in three hours.”