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“ Students who have not attained an ATAR may not be well prepared to undertake higher education courses with demanding assessment requirements and examinations .”
The WA Education Minister Dr Tony Buti has expressed skepticism about early offers from universities , and strongly insists universities should be supporting the integrity of the ATAR , regardless of early offers .
“ Early offers from universities based on predicted ATARs need to be backed up by universities requiring that students complete year 12 , satisfy the English requirements , achieve their predicted ATAR and attain their WACE [ Western Australian Certificate of Education ],” the authority spokesperson said .
Ms Paino also said UAC tries to undertake a holistic approach to ATAR , which understands that exams aren ’ t for everyone , and employs other ways to determine how successful a student will be at university .
“ It ’ s just one number , how does that tell us everything we need to know about a student and their ability to thrive at university ?” she said .
“ The reality is , [ ATAR ] has never tried to . It tells us a student ’ s academic performance within a cohort at a certain point in time .”
She said , as a whole , all universities are looking more at other educational competencies of their applicants . Some processes , such as interviews , are more difficult to measure than an ATAR rank , and need to consider the different opportunities some students have compared to others .
Little to no data exists about the impact early offers may have on both students and the sector , because the process is so recent , while changes in attitude towards exams or ATAR is too fresh to quantify .
“ It ’ s more about anecdotal data and perception at this point , which is not something that was an intention of the [ early offer ] schemes ,” Ms Paino said .
It never has been that there aren ’ t multiple pathways into university , this is just another one that ’ s attracted a lot of attention in the media
“ I don ’ t think there ’ s any intent anywhere to ‘ up-end ’ the current system of exams at the end [ of year 12 ], because the difference is now that the relevance of those exams have changed for only some students , who are not intrinsically motivated to get the best result .”
Although early offers are popular , the general consensus among the teachers and bodies Education Review has spoken to say ATAR is still a useful tool in learning ,
Education Review is Australia ’ s highly-respected industry publication , providing unrivalled coverage of the primary and secondary school education sectors to thousands of schools and teachers every day .
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