policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
ATAR under fire
Finkel’s view on admissions
rank labelled “misguided”.
By Loren Smith
A
ustralia’s chief scientist, Dr Alan
Finkel, has an ATAR-related
grievance.
“Students select their courses with an eye
to a number: the ATAR to enter a particular
course,” he wrote in his introduction to the
STEM Industry-Schools Partnerships report.
“Rightly or wrongly, they absorb the
message that the way to boost their ATAR is
to drop down a level in mathematics.”
He offered these views in his position as
forum chair of the COAG Education Council,
which authored the report, Optimising STEM
Industry-School Partnerships: Inspiring
Australia’s Next Generation.
The report deals mostly with what its title
describes. However, it is Finkel’s comments
on the federally administered ATAR that
have attracted the most attention.
The Universities Admissions Centre
(UAC) takes issue with Finkel’s stance. The
private company that processes most
university admissions in NSW and the ACT
termed the opinion that students attempt
to game the ATAR system by choosing
easier subjects, including in mathematics,
“misguided”.
“Our analysis shows that the majority
of students who were more capable
in mathematics in Year 10 continue to
study the higher levels of mathematics
in the HSC, and that most students who
were less capable in mathematics in
Year 10 choose to study the lower levels
of mathematics.
“When we compared the ATARs of
students with similar mathematical ability in
Year 10, we found that those students who
chose Mathematics General obtained (on
average) a similar ATAR to those who chose
to study Mathematics,” it said.
However, UAC admitted that the scaling
of maths subjects can – and will – be
improved. With the introduction of new
NSW mathematics syllabuses in 2020, for
the first time a ‘common scale’ will be used
to assess these subjects.
Contrary to popular perceptions, a
subject’s scale, used to calculate a student’s
ATAR, isn’t determined on the basis of the
subject’s difficulty; rather, it is based on
the average academic achievement of the
cohort undertaking that subject.
For example, if chemistry students
generally scored very high marks in all of
their other subjects, and physics students
didn’t, chemistry would be scaled higher
than physics.
The Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre,
the Victorian equivalent of UAC, holds a
similar view to UAC. Scaling allows for “fair
comparisons … of students’ achievements
over all their studies” to be made, its
website says.
“Because of this, students can freely
choose studies they like or are good at
without worrying about their ATAR.
“This is not always well understood and
many students believe that to achieve their
best possible ATAR they need to choose
studies that are scaled up.”
Yet others have supported Finkel’s
questioning of the ATAR and its potential
impact on subject choice. The president
of the Australian Academy of Technology
and Engineering, Professor Hugh Bradlow,
noted that Finkel’s comments are particularly
biting, given they come at a time when the
number of students taking advanced and
intermediate Year 12 maths remains, for the
sixth consecutive year, at a historic low.
“The gender gap is also a cause for
concern, with more boys enrolled in
intermediate and, in particular, advanced
mathematics than girls. If girls miss out on
advanced mathematics, that will undermine
female participation in many STEM
professions,” Bradlow said.
“This is a worrying trend that will damage
the productivity of the Australian economy
over time – which is why the COAG
Education Council’s willingness to accept
the report is so welcome.”
The Australian Mathematical Sciences
Institute also backed Finkel’s views. It
agreed with his belief that there are
insufficient university prerequisites for
maths degrees, leading to the dearth of
students taking higher level maths. ■
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