Intense focus on HSC results and ATAR must end
As the HSC class of 2021 receive their HSC results this week, is anyone remembering how close they came to not having to sit exams at all?
In July last year, senior education representatives including the Head of Catholic Schools were calling on the government to abandon the HSC due to the lockdown, and utilise students’ in-school assessments instead. After months of heated debate, the government finally announced in September that the HSC would go ahead, starting a month later than originally intended and therefore also delaying results until this week.
Students, parents and school administrators struggled through COVID-19 restrictions and school lockdowns, but in the end all 400,000 individual exam sessions were delivered and very few students missed their tests due to the virus. This success defied international experience – in 2020 British schooling authorities cancelled all end of high school examinations. So did France, Norway, The Netherlands, Italy and Spain. The cancellation of the French Baccalauréat made 2020 the first time since 1808 that the exam did not take place.
The delivery of the HSC in 2021 therefore marks a monumental achievement for NSW education authorities. But the question they should now be asking themselves is – was it worth it?
The intense focus placed on the HSC and ATAR results needs to end. It does damage to students’ wellbeing (let alone the wellbeing of their parents and teachers) and put simply, your ATAR isn’t as important as it is made out to be.
The ATAR is created primarily for university entry, to rank students on a scale in relation to their academic performance. There is no doubt that it is a good and robust measure of scholastic achievement, but by definition that makes it a pretty hopeless measure of everything else.
Only 30 per cent of first year Australian students gain their place at university based solely on their ATAR.
The ATAR doesn’t attempt to capture a student’s capacity for collaboration and creative problem-solving in team environments. It doesn’t speak to their volunteer work or leadership capacity. It does not account for “jagged profiles”. That is, where a student excels in certain areas but performs poorly in others. There is also a close correlation between lofty ATAR results and high socio-economic family background. Talent can therefore be missed by such a narrow indicator of potential.
While a high ATAR remains a strong predictor of academic success at university, a low ATAR does not correlate to failure. Most universities recognise this and provide a range of pathways to university including portfolio entry, academic history, interviews, schools’ recommendation schemes, bridging courses and aptitude tests. For mature age entry, the ATAR is not used at all. Only 30 per cent of first year Australian students gain their place at university based solely on their ATAR.
So why all the fuss? Most educators recognise all of the issues I’ve raised, but education reform is a slow-moving beast. As a former minister, I am well aware of the passion that any change invokes in parents, students and teachers alike. The good news is momentum is building for a broader approach that demonstrates a student’s range of skills, knowledge and experiences from inside and outside the classroom.
A recent federal government review into senior secondary pathways into work, education and training, chaired by Professor Peter Shergold, recommended that all Australian students leave school with a “Learner Profile” to complement the narrow focus of the ATAR. Building on this recommendation, a new philanthropically funded body – Learning Creates Australia – is looking at how such profiles can be used for university entry without relying on an ATAR at all.
A Learner’s Profile is holistic in its approach, seeking to demonstrate qualities such as a student’s disposition to learn and to reflect on that learning, whether a student has good organisational skills, their ability to work collaboratively in a team, and their capacity for creative problem-solving. These are the “21st century skills” employers keep telling educators that they need for their future workforce, but currently schools and universities have limited ways to assess growth and competence in these important areas.
Next month, UTS will welcome 200 first year students from south-west Sydney who have gained a place through an innovative pilot program designed to develop and demonstrate these capabilities. These students have gained entry to UTS without using an ATAR.
Many of these students would not have secured a place at UTS if it was down to their ATAR results. Yet, our tracking of the performance of similar students is that they perform at university as well as the broader undergraduate population.
For us, it is about spotting potential and making sure we maximise access to higher education. As Shergold’s review said “we need to open doors, not narrow pathways”. Since the review, South Australia and NSW have announced that they plan to proceed with Learner Profiles, and both are currently in the design phase of the project.
As the world emerges from the pandemic, it is a time for re-examination so we can respond to the world we face now. A narrow obsession with an academic ranking is not serving the needs of students, parents, educators or employers. Nor does it contribute to a fairer society.
Republished from the Sydney Morning Herald, 20 January 2022.
