The Swinburne courses you don’t need an ATAR to get into
One Melbourne university has ditched the ATAR for entry to some of its first year courses, as Year 12s struggle with a year of coronavirus upheaval. Here’s how places will be decided instead and which courses are eligible.
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Educators who have been calling for the ATAR to be axed have welcomed Swinburne University’s decision to shelve the ranking system for Year 12 intake into many of its courses in 2021.
The coronavirus upheaval to the academic year, which has seen international student numbers plummet, a challenging Year 12, plus the growth of free TAFE courses, has prompted universities facing a drop in students and revenue to reach for the Band Aids.
Swinburne has announced that students will be able to enrol in arts, design, health science, business, IT, screen production, sports science, animation, psychology, criminology and media and other courses without an ATAR.
Some offers will be made as early as August, long before exams and ATARs will be released.
In its place, they will be assessed on criteria which includes a letter of recommendation from their school, minimum English requirements and completion of Year 12.
Former secondary school principal and Future Schools’ Alliance founder Peter Hutton welcomed the move.
Mr Hutton launched an online #NOATAR2020 petition earlier this year to axe the ATAR, saying it was an outdated measure of a student’s performance. It has nearly 22,000 signatures.
“Swinburne has already shown innovative practice and this represents a good move by an excellent institution,” he said.
“Progressively universities who are competing for a fixed number of students will have to rethink their domestic enrolment strategy.”
Mr Hutton said some of the early movers on this have been the University of Western Australia, Macquarie University, University of Tasmania, and the Australian National University and the University of Adelaide, both members of the prestigious group of eight. Some unis will judge students on their Year 11 results.
Swinburne Early Entry Program offers an ATAR-free alternative pathway to popular Swinburne courses including Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Business, Bachelor of Health Sciences and Bachelor of Design, along with a range of first year of degree, Unilink diploma offerings, the uni said.
>>SEE THE ELIGIBLE COURSES HERE
Swinburne Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education and Quality) Professor Chris Pilgrim said the VCE students this year had “faced a year like no other”.
“We know that students in 2020 continue to rise to the occasion and achieve exceptional results, and that completion of VCE remains of utmost importance. But we also understand it has been a unique year of study for many and we want to support students to continue their studies into 2021,” Prof Pilgrim said.
“Our focus remains on assuring rigorous academic quality, while allowing students from all
backgrounds and circumstances to succeed.”
Mr Hutton said he believed top universities will be trying to manage entry.
“Increasingly, universities at a higher ranking will have to make this move,” he said.
He said the pandemic was an opportunity to overhaul the higher education sector.
He said universities had increased their capacity to deliver online courses which were done at a lower unit cost, which should open the door for increased entry into first year university for anyone who wanted to attend.
It also was an opportunity to integrate TAFE and uni under a reverse articulation model where, if a student left a uni course after first year they could be awarded a diploma and after two years an associate diploma.
Former Marcellin College deputy principal and now education consultant and Game Changers podcast host Adriano Di Prato applauded Swinburne for having the courage to consider a range of competencies and dispositions beyond focusing on the “minutes that students sit in seats, or how they can take a test”.
“Hopefully, their decision to accept Year 12 students without an ATAR score is here to stay beyond 2021,” he said.
“We have structured our schooling system to be focused on single metric measurements of achievement, that are often isolated to educational environments (think ATAR) rather than on the post school success of students.”
Earlier this year, as the school shutdowns loomed, Mr Hutton said the only upside was an opportunity for a reset and rethink of the ATAR university entrance system.
“What better time to kill the ATAR off completely than now, when an already demonstrably inequitable system is made further inequitable due to disruption, remote schooling and inequity in technology provision,” he said.
Mr Hutton, who was principal at Templestowe College, and now convenes a group called The Future Schools Alliance, said the ATAR was not used for entrance in a lot of tertiary courses.
He said the pandemic “will no doubt significantly dent Australia as a destination for international students, so universities and other tertiary institutions will have the capacity to take more students and there really is not a big down side to a more educated populous”.
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