Ella Saul isn't your average year 12 graduate.

She didn't spend her final year at high school cramming for a gruelling series of exams, or aiming for an impressive university entrance ranking.

Instead the 18-year-old, from Newcastle in New South Wales, spent her last year of school doing a combination of self-directed learning, completing open university courses, and working on a major project.

Ms Saul decided she would build her own tiny house and install it on the back of a ute.

"As a kid I've always loved travelling and I did it a lot with my family," she said.

"To be able to have my own space, take it wherever I want, and not have to pay rent or look after a mortgage and always have somewhere to stay was really important to me.

"I felt like this was a good opportunity to do it."

Inside Ella Saul's house on wheels. ( ABC Newcastle: Liz Farquhar )

Learning to build was 'a challenge'

The novice builder admitted she had to learn everything from scratch.

"No, I'd never built anything before, so that was quite a challenge to learn all those skills," she said.

"But my teacher had built a house before and a boat, and so he really guided me through this process.

"The box has two sections, one slides over the other and there are metal actuators on the inside that are powered by a 12-volt battery.

"They extend so the box will raise up and you have room to stand.

"I'm going to get a solar panel that will charge the battery, and that's all I really need because everything runs off that.

"There'll be a kitchen and a bed. For showers and toilets, I'll just find public ones."

Steiner school celebrates first year 12 graduating class

Ms Saul is among the first cohort of year 12 students to graduate from a Steiner school in the Hunter Valley town of Maitland.

The Linuwel School has just been registered by the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA) as a school that does not participate in the Higher School Certificate. So students will not receive a university entrance score, or ATAR.

Gerrard O'Leary is a senior school teacher at the Linuwel School near Maitland in the NSW Hunter Valley. ( ABC Newcastle: Liz Farquhar )

Year 12 teacher Gerrard O'Leary said many parents were looking for options when it came to preparing their children for a changing job market and further study.

"Luckily I think there is a change in the landscape of tertiary education entrance and alternative pathways are becoming more an option for young people," he said.

"So we wanted to provide a platform for young people who wished to go that way rather than down the high pressure HSC route.

"It's not at all a case of us waving some flag and decrying the HSC process — that's a valuable and worthwhile process for many, but that's not the process we want to engage in for our students.

"We want this alternative, so we were a bit excited when we found out that NESA were changing their rules."

But he insisted finishing without an ATAR was no barrier to university study.

"One of our students who finished in year 11 last year has just got herself into architecture at the University of Newcastle through her portfolio of work and doing her Special Tertiary Admissions Test or STAT, which is one of the options we present to our students."

The year 11 and 12 building at the Linuwel Steiner School. ( ABC Newcastle: Liz Farquhar )

NSW curriculum under review

New South Wales is in the process of reviewing its entire curriculum from kindergarten to Year 12, the first comprehensive review since 1989.

It will assess ways to make the NSW curriculum clearer to understand and teach, and will consider its strengths and weaknesses.

The NSW Association of Independent Schools (AISNSW) is making its own submission, partly based on a recent survey of around 20 of the nation's leading CEOs, who were asked to comment on the future of schooling in Australia.

CEO of the Association of Independent Schools NSW, Dr Geoff Newcombe. ( ABC Newcastle: Liz Farquhar )

AISNSW chief executive Geoff Newcombe said almost all agreed the current system needed to change.

"They talked about resilience, just about all of them," he said.

"They said that students coming into the workforce today don't know how to deal with failure.

"That's something that we've got to think really hard about because if we want kids to be entrepreneurial, it isn't all going to work.

"And almost to a person they talked about team building and the importance of teams and the importance of collaborative problem solving.

"We've got to get across the message that the success of the team is more important than the success of the individual."

Dr Newcombe said the review was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for change.

"While it would be unfair to say that the HSC hasn't served us well over many years in NSW — because it definitely has — we've got to ask the question, is it time to change things?" he said.

"I think the feeling we're getting is that it is time to change."

He said the aim should be for students to graduate with more than a number.

"If they could graduate with true enthusiasm for learning in particular areas, that would be fantastic.

"What they're leaving with now, is it so wonderful that we're not willing to change it? I don't think so."

Building skills for life

Ms Saul said she had learned some valuable lessons from the tiny house project.

"That you can really do anything, it doesn't matter if you doubt yourself, if you set your mind to it, you can just do it," she said.

"I did not think I would be able to build at all.

"But it's been great to realise that if you really want to do something you can find people to help you, and often people are really willing."

Ms Saul plans to spend 2019 travelling and expects she will eventually study anthropology at university.