Victorian students woke to the sound of the ATAR alarm yesterday morning as their senior exam results were released from 7am, before the rest of the year 12 students in Australia who will receive their final marks in the coming ...
More »Unpacking Australia’s HSC gender gap: podcast
New data from the University Admissions Centre has shown that young men are less likely to achieve an ATAR than women and don't perform as well in their first-year university courses. According to Deakin University lecturer in education Piper Rodd, ...
More »Educational leader urges parents to worry less, but questions the ongoing obsession with the HSC and current education model
An educational leader is not only recommending parents try to worry a little less during homeschooling periods, but is also urging a re-evaluation of the HSC and Australia's current educational model. But before sharing his thoughts on how parents can ...
More »‘Our focus is never on results’: How a Brisbane girls’ school blitzed Year 12 in 2020
Despite legitimate concerns that COVID-19 could significantly impact Year 12 student achievement in 2020, over 77 per cent of a Brisbane girls’ school’s 190 students achieved an ATAR score of 90 or above (equivalent of OP 1-5). Following on from ...
More »Uni to add 10 bonus points to some women’s ATAR scores
Should a woman wish to study an undergraduate degree in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Technology Sydney, she would see her ATAR score suddenly jump 10 points. The same adjustment would be made to the ...
More »Key education issues in the media: expert responds
Teacher performance-linked pay, teacher performance generally and student achievement – these are three issues that are never far from the headlines. But are the debates founded on sound evidence or merely the thought bubbles of politicians and populist ...
More »See You ATAR: Time for universities to rethink their acceptance criteria
It’s time to look beyond the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank. Australian 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 ...
More »Rank hypocrisy: is it time to reassess how the ATAR is used in tertiary education?
The current policy climate in teacher education in Australia has a focus on accountability for outcomes as judged by a decreasing trend of primary and secondary student performance on a range of national (NAPLAN) and international rankings (Program for Internal ...
More »Educating the educators
Critics say that the push for teachers to have higher ATARs puts too much emphasis on one measure of ability. The comment that Australia is "at risk of producing a cohort of toxic teachers" triggered a swathe of controversy and ...
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