A dozen principals wrote a letter about the ATAR. Here's what they want to change.

More than a dozen principals from across Victoria have come together to publish a letter to the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) and the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) on scrapping the current ATAR system as the main pathway to university.  

The principals, who come from a coalition of public and private schools, want to make way for a system that allows students to be evaluated on both academic and personal achievements.

The 'ATAR' stands for Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank and it is a number between zero and 99.95 that informs a student of their position in the year group. 

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A growing number of voices have been raising doubts about the ATAR for some time.

Record numbers of students opted out of getting an ATAR score to avoid being 'ranked' and in 2021 figures show that 5,373 students completed their VCE unscored in 2021, meaning they did not sit exams or receive an ATAR. The data for last year is not yet known.

Universities are also adapting and changing how they assess future student intake. According to the letter, obtained by The Age, they now offer more early and non-ATAR based offers and are "seeking more and better information about candidates than can be provided in the ATAR, mainly in the interests of better matching candidates to opportunity and increasing diversity of their student intakes."

The letter also explains how the ATAR ranking system doesn't consider the full range of a student’s achievements and capabilities, and leaves many school leavers feeling "empty-handed".

"These arrangements no longer seem fit for purpose for many, perhaps most learners," the principals write.

Instead of the ATAR system, the coalition of principals state they would like to see 'learner profiles' that focus more on a students' range of interests and skills including 'communication, caring, and creativity'.

The principals composed the letter after 14 school leaders met in November with VCAA head Stephen Gniel and VTAC head Teresa Tjia to discuss their concerns.

Professor Sandra Milligan, director and enterprise professor from the University of Melbourne, agrees. She is head of the New Metrics Research Project and wrote recently for The Guardian about how she has been working with high schools to develop viable alternative options to the ATAR.

"Learner profiles are informative about what a learner knows and can do, the standards they have reached, their interests and strengths, and their capacity to learn and keep learning, to collaborate, to communicate, to be good citizens," Milligan writes.

"The assessments can meet rigorous standards of validity, reliability, comparability and transparency, and can be more inclusive. We think that in tandem with a successor to the ATAR, assessments of general capabilities and associated profiles are the way of the future."

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Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator and professor of education at Southern Cross University, wrote in The Guardian that Australia is the only country in the world putting students under such stress for a single number.

"When the COVID pandemic first disrupted education and its traditional structures, there was a real opportunity to scrap ATAR," Sahlberg wrote.

"It is noteworthy that Australia is the only country that sends students from high school to further studies or the world of work with one rank or value that is supposed to illustrate how competitive they are. Most students never need their ATAR anyway, so why do we continue to do this?"

A spokesperson for VTAC, which calculates the ATAR told The Age that each tertiary institution has autonomy over their entry requirements.

“VTAC applicants are currently considered on a range of factors in addition to or instead of the ATAR, including portfolios, discipline-specific tests, auditions, interviews, and access or equity schemes,” the spokesperson also said.

However, the growing pressure from educators at every level and students to scrap the ATAR and move towards the 'learner profile' system continues.

Feature Image: Getty.