Any discussion of the Higher School Certificate, subject choices, tertiary entry requirements and intellectual standards instantly arouses students and parents, politicians and educators to high anxiety.
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Ask Rob Stokes. The NSW Education Minister dared to question the orthodoxy surrounding STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects last month and became the centre of a loud and angry controversy.
Now the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, has contributed, with a report to Australia’s education ministers on how to improve students’ performance in STEM subjects and how schools and business might cooperate to promote them.
Dr Finkel singles out the ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) for particular criticism. It is a worthwhile target in a worthwhile debate. Dr Finkel was mostly interested in reasons why students are not choosing STEM subjects but the criticism applies equally to other subjects. The current system is both opaque and misleading, because students try to game it, choosing subjects not because they are interesting but for their (real or imagined) ability to increase an ATAR ranking.
His report cites recent research which found that students who shunned advanced mathematics said they were aiming for a higher score in an easier subject to improve their ATAR. That means the ATAR effectively penalises students who study some languages at an advanced level – an effect which is likely to have deterred students from studying languages at all.
In both cases, measurement undermines education. In arguing for STEM subjects to be promoted, Dr Finkel’s report assumes the education system should aim to meet the needs of industry. That is a flaw: we say the proper aim of education is to meet the needs of students.
A good education is intellectually honest. That means always taking the hardest feasible option so as to learn as much as possible – not cutting corners or cheating to gain marks or game the system.
As Dr Finkel says, it is irrelevant whether the effects of the ATAR are real or misconceived: the system itself encourages attempts to game it, and by doing so contributes to second-rate outcomes and an overall decline in education performance.
Like other measures which become gamed, the ATAR may have outlived its usefulness.
