Year 12 and ATAR need a rethink

It is time to say enough, and dramatically recast the way we teach senior high school.

When will we say enough? This week more than 200,000 Year 12 students get their public exam results, with most of them hanging out for the seemingly all-important ATAR number — the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank.

That number, when it pops up on their phone, is the culmination of more than a year’s intense pressure.

The high scorers have put themselves through ridiculous hoops — rote learning facts, memorising essays, forgetting about a balanced life — in order to do well. The low scorers, many of whom are not suited to the university study that is the supposed purpose of the ATAR, are left feeling like failures.

Worst off are those low scorers who wanted to score high but fell by the wayside due to stress, depression or mental illness.

It is time to say enough, and dramatically recast the way we teach senior high school.

This is important not just because Year 12 causes students undue and unwelcome stress. It’s important because the learning methods that dominate Year 12 are known to be useless at delivering the outcomes we want.

Consider this. In the automated economy that is bearing down on us, driven by artificial intelligence, the old skills that schoolchildren and university students were taught are a ticket to unemployment.

Employers of the future will want employees with people skills: teamwork, leadership, communication, analytical and critical thinking, self-reflection, initiative, resilience and so on.

These are the things AI can’t do — at least not yet.

This is being recognised and, in junior high school in particular, programs are popping up to teach these qualities.

But then students get to Years 11 and 12 and it all goes out the window because it’s time to worship at the altar of the ATAR.

After that, if a student goes on to higher education, guess what? Universities increasingly want to develop those people skills that kids have been told to forget about in Year 11 and Year 12. Talk about confusing.

Of course some will argue that Year 12 and the ATAR are somehow an important rite of passage. They build resilience, one hears.

Really? What builds resilience is learning that it’s OK to fail, and then pick yourself up and have another go, having learned from the experience.

The ATAR, with its underlying message that you’ve got one shot or you’re stuffed, is the exact opposite of this.

Clearly there needs to be a way to select which students are admitted to popular courses. Some method of assessment is needed.

So, what should be done?

First, don’t make the assessment so pressured and unrealistic. Life isn’t about three-hour exams.

Second, give students far better information and guidance on courses and professions that will suit them. It makes no sense to kill to get into a popular course that you pay good money for and later don’t use.

Every other part of education — primary school, junior high school, tertiary — is coming under increasing scrutiny. Time to do the same to Years 11 and 12.

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