policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
See you ATAR
It’s time to look beyond the
Australian Tertiary Admission Rank.
By Geoff Kinkade
A
ustralian universities have had it
so good for so long. They expect
and have become accustomed
to secondary schools doing the university
selection testing using the ATAR.
At the completion of up to 14 years
of schooling, most students attain an
ATAR, which is a measure of academic
performance and attainment. Yet, of Year 12
public school students in 2015, only 46 per
cent went on to university in 2016.
So what’s the actual point in providing
ATAR scores?
Collated ATARs are used to form tables,
by school, across a range of indicators (e.g.
the Index of Community Socio-Educational
Advantage), which are used for state and
national comparison. Parents use these
‘league ladders’ to determine the school
they most want their child to attend. In
states with selective-entrance Gifted and
Talented Programs, such as NSW and
WA, this can provide access to schooling
irrespective of residential address.
Education departments loathe and love
the ATAR according to the season and the
performance of public schools each year.
Academically selective schools occupy
the top places in the league ladders,
maintaining preconceived perspectives
on the benefits/costs of such selection
processes – according to who you ask.
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Education department directors-general
and school performance executives
congratulate, cajole, berate or humiliate
school principals according to their
students’ collated attainment and the
school’s relative standing on the league
ladder. School improvement strategies,
student performance targets, system
incentives and implied corresponding
consequences are devised, and then the
secondary school journey into the next set
of performance indicators unfolds as part of
the annual cycle.
Most people claim an understanding
of the ATAR. Few secondary school
teachers know how the ATAR is calculated.
Even fewer can explain in clear terms
the processes used in arriving at an
individual rank.
The ATAR process is akin to a ‘black box’,
whereby the inputs are known and the
output mysteriously appears to determine
each student’s education prospects.
There is considerable similarity in
university selections and the Academic
Selective Entrance Test to secondary
schools through Gifted and Talented
Programs. The selective entrance process
is one of application, assessment, offer
of placement and enrolment. Student
placement is determined by the score in
the four test components.
In NSW there is enormous
oversubscription to James Ruse Agricultural
High School, and in WA there are seven
times as many applicants for Perth Modern
School as there are places. Details of the
minimum entry scores for these selective
schools are available online.
This highly competitive selective entrance
means students need to have finished in
the top 10 per cent of all applicants. The
calibre of these students, in combination
with the benefits that accrue from full-time
ability grouping, serves to deliver academic
success and therefore to perpetuate the
demand for placement to these schools.
It used to be that the selective schools
were part of a social justice initiative –
giftedness and the belief that exceptionally
able students have special learning needs.
While this remains true to an extent, there
is an international trend that cannot be
ignored by school educators, and certainly
not by Australian universities.
The Human Capital Model recognises the
importance of the return on the investment
of public monies. And universities are
increasingly being required to demonstrate
explicitly and empirically the value-adding
that student qualifications – developed in
part through government funding – will
bring to our nation.
Presently the focus of attention is on the
selection processes used by universities.
The federal government is seeking more
explicit statements around selection criteria
and more transparent practices in the
placement of applicants.
This seems reasonable, given that
selective schools demonstrate that this is
already achieved.
An Australian educational environment
that no longer uses the ATAR will instead be
characterised by the following:
• Secondary schools will conduct their
own end of schooling assessments
across broad and diverse measures
of student attainment. There’s plenty
of detailed, informative and diverse
attainment data in every school for
every student by the end of Year 12.
There’s breadth and depth of objective
and subjective information on every
young citizen and it’s collected within
the context of the local educational
community. For some students this will
include attainments at state, national
and international levels.
• State government education authorities
will devise and develop contemporary
school-related measures of the value
added through schooling.
• Universities will undertake processes
whereby eligible students apply for
particular faculties at specific campuses.
(They already do this.) Then universities
will conduct the selections based
on criteria specific to the entrance
requirements and the factors essential
for likely success in the completion of
the qualification. (This already occurs at
the postgraduate level.) ■
Geoff Kinkade is an education expert and
high school adviser at YourTutor.com.au.