Students are required to keep going to school until mid-December unless they have full-time paid work and notify the school, but many students have stopped attending lessons since the School Certificate exams finished last Friday.

Some claim there is no point going to school since the curriculum is complete.

Sam Henderson, 15, from Hunter River High School, said most of his classes were heavily depleted and offered little value to students who attended.

"Most classes just watch a movie or do worksheets," he said.

"It's pretty pointless."

A Department of Education spokesperson said government secondary schools require students to keep attending classes until the end of the year because there is "still important work to be done".

Schools dealt with unexplained absences in the same way as any other time of year, he said.

But some students claim that finishing their exams leaves them in limbo, unable to start the year 11 curriculum but finished with year 10.

Maitland Grossman High School student Rachel Stephen said she had tried to persevere with school beyond the exams but there was little on offer.

"We went for a couple of periods yesterday," she said.

"There were like 20 people and we just did something about technology, something heaps random."

Many of the students who spoke to The Herald planned to continue to their Higher School Certificate (HSC) but said their remaining year 10 classes failed to help them prepare.

Maitland Grossman student David Andrews said his current classes offered little help in preparing for the HSC.

"They just change us into the classes that we're in [next year], but we're not doing anything," he said.