ATAR ideology [1/3].
Part 1 - Learning to compete.
What teachers can do, with their students, is create new possibilities, build paths into regions that have never been explored before - Raewyn Connell
Although not specifically related to this post, listen to the below episode of the Teacher’s Education Review for our 2023 Year in Review.
In this episode, we take a few deep dives into some of the most notable Australian educational stories of 2023 (AI in education, teacher shortages and the initial teacher education Strong Beginnings report). Check it out 👇.
Looking back.
Another year has passed.
With it comes another cohort of final year secondary school students sent out into the “real world”, as they received their study scores, along with their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) and found their way into the various different opportunities that Australian society has to offer. The ATAR is a number between 0 and 99.95 that ranks students in relation to one another, as a means of supporting universities with admission selection to various courses. It is also worth noting:
The average ATAR is usually around 70.00. If every school student went on to achieve an ATAR, the average ATAR would be 50.00. But because some students leave school early and the ones who stay on to receive an ATAR are a smaller, more academically able group, the average ATAR is higher (UAC, 2024, para. 2).
With no hesitation whatsoever, the media is quick to present stories of “top performing” students and schools, despite claims that ATAR scores are only used by 25% of young Australians. The Guardian released an article that attempted to downplay the power of the ATAR by profiling a small selection of individuals who managed to succeed professionally despite their poor final year result. Understandably, these kinds of articles never seem to meet reality for a number of individuals and so often fall flat. Discrediting a powerful cultural tool is not always as simple as claiming its meaninglessness with a few privileged voices.
This is the first post in a 3-part series1, exploring the ideological nature of the ATAR in Australian schooling and its implications for teachers, students and communities. Over the next three posts, I will not sing the ATAR’s praises, nor will I attempt to discredit its power in today’s society. I wish to instead explore the way that the ATAR, in ideologically framing education as a competition, holds the potential to limit our, as well as our student’s, understanding of education and as a consequence, life in society.
In short, I seek to briefly problematise the ATAR in order to question its desirability as an educational tool.
In this post, I will briefly explore the way that the ATAR has ideologically framed education as a competition and discuss some of the implications of this for teachers and their students.
Somebody has to fail.
I will always remember one lesson I had as a high school student, where a teacher well known for their rather wild nature and unpredictability stood in as a substitute teacher for our class one day. This teacher taught economics, was outspoken and (as some might say) “politically incorrect”. Most feared him, he spoke with cold authority. He gave the impression that he’d seen more of the world than you and you believed it. You either took his word or kept quiet.
I can recall the rough location in the school and my approximate age, but the most lasting memory of the lesson was something this teacher said to the class when discussing economics. He explained that in the world there would always be what he called a “s*** pile”. In fact, this was necessary. He then acted at the front of the class as if he were hiking up a mountain and went on to explain that: “there needs to be a ‘s*** pile’ for the rest of us to stand on”. Even as a young boy, I didn’t need anyone to connect the dots for me.
In our current system of standardisation, “high performers” can only exist with a metaphorical “s*** pile” (please excuse the crass). Schooling structures, such as the ATAR, ensure young people are pitted against each other in an academic competition to present their worth as contributors to society. The final year for our school students is not a story about their growth, personal achievements, character or integrity. It is not even about performance.
If we decide that we want to normally distribute the performance of students, which “we” have, then it doesn’t matter if all students are receiving a “world-class” education (whatever that means)…What it does mean is that we create winners and losers.
It is a story of their performance in relation to their peers. The latter is key here. If we decide that we want to normally distribute the performance of students, which “we” have, then it doesn’t matter if all students are receiving a “world-class” education (whatever that means). Standardising our student data to a normal distribution requires that 50% are below average and 50% are above average2. It does not matter whether our final year students are meeting the requirements of their courses to a satisfactory (or even to an exemplary) level, as the normal distribution still requires a rank from lowest to highest student. What it does mean is that we create winners and losers. The idea that if you work hard in your final year of schooling it will pay off is only a reality if you take somebody else’s place in the educational race that “we” have set up and continue to perpetuate. This is the official framing of the ATAR, which can be witnessed in the University Admissions Centre’s informational video, which declares “your ATAR is your rank in the HSC race”. As Steven Kolber (writer for The First 100,000 words: Writings on Education by a Teacher) states, this is a race that often “not all students know how to play, and that some schools are better than others at shaping the playing field for students” (forthcoming).
This goes the same for teachers too. I recall a mentor of mine would often say, “every teacher across the state is providing their students with a 30-study score”, so our teachers (and schools) find themselves continually pressured to provide more. Often coined as a “point of difference”, this can equate to more one-to-one time outside class, more exam study sessions, more exam practice, more (dare I say it) direct instruction. Just in an effort to push over the average. It’s a tiring hill to climb on an already beaten track.
This is one of the core ethical issues with schools chasing (not to mention boasting of) higher median study scores. In order for one school to increase their median study score, another school must decrease in their relative performance. It is a zero-sum game3.
In short, somebody has to fail.
Balancing the scales.
As I feel with most educational practices and issues, I’m not about to say at this point that the ATAR must be scrapped. My concern is not so much in trying to prove that the ATAR is “unfair” or that it must be completely replaced. Considering our current technological age of generative artificial intelligence, it seems that prior calls for a move towards “narrative evaluation” is likely to be unhelpful. “Learner profiles” have been suggested as an ATAR alternative, but seem burdensome for teachers in an educational system so constrained by explicit measurement of prescribed curriculum outcomes. Professor Rachel Wilson states that “we will always need a system for sorting when it comes to the provision of very high, and very expensive levels of education like university”, so it is possible as some argue that the ATAR may in fact be the best we can do practically when it comes to supporting universities in selecting students for their courses. I’m not even necessarily interested in making a more “equitable” measure to support entry into university in this series of posts, although I will gladly encourage this work to continue. My main concern arises in the way that the ideological nature of the ATAR, in framing education as a competition, has particular socialisation effects that hold the potential to shape the thinking and practice of teachers, students and communities towards an impoverished understanding of educational aims and purposes.
This is something I believe we need to consider seriously.
I have problems with the way the ATAR has become the yard stick to which schools pride themselves on and the measure to which teachers of senior years judge their worth. It is my contention that our focus has continued to be on the ATAR itself as an object, rather than considering the way that it contributes to the subjectivities of those it comes into contact with. Ultimately, when left unexamined or uncritically accepted, the ATAR may in fact hinder the educational aims we have for Australian schooling.
Next time.
In Part 2, I aim to explore the implications of this ideological framing of education in a broader sense than how students understand their final years of schooling. The ATAR will be interrogated as a tool that does not simply rank individuals, but similar to the concept of the “hidden curriculum” holds the potential to powerfully shape Australian teachers and their students.
Till then,
References
Universities Admissions Centre. (2024). Australian Tertiary Admission Rank: What is the ATAR?, retrieved 4th January 2024.
Steven Kolber has also released a related post worth reading exploring the “gaming” of the ATAR here: https://open.substack.com/pub/stevenkolber/p/the-games-we-play-atar-as-sorting?r=1ky3yr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
If all this talk about the normal distribution is a bit confusing (and if you’re wondering, yes, it is!), please do some research yourself to grapple with this concept. This is a fundamental construction of our current way of thinking about education and it is important that we understand what it really means. Feel free to get in touch with me if you need some direction surrounding this.
I must thank researcher Sally Larsen for her work and fielding my questions in relation to this.
One of the most pressing issues in our education system is the reliance on the ATAR as the primary measure of student and school success. Sadly, this inherently binary system guarantees that roughly half of all students and schools will be deemed "losers" based solely on their ATAR score. Thankfully, a growing number of students are recognizing this flaw and seeking alternative pathways through unscored year 12 programs or other options. It's intriguing to consider the potential impact if a majority of students were to collectively harness their power and opt out of the ATAR system entirely. Such a dramatic shift may not be as far-fetched as it seems, and could ultimately force a much-needed reevaluation of how we assess student potential.
As usual, you hit the nail on the head when you said "My main concern arises in the way that the ideological nature of the ATAR, in framing education as a competition, has particular socialisation effects that hold the potential to shape the thinking and practice of teachers, students and communities towards an impoverished understanding of educational aims and purposes." And I'm sure you know how I feel about the whole competitive scoring issue. It has been my view that this could be solved by letting universities be responsible for 'entrance assessment', rather than school systems be responsible for 'exit assessment' Schools have a much more important and complex purpose than merely preparing students for university. Schools prepare students for the whole of society and the whole of life.