Schools ‘gaming uni entry system’ through the International Baccalaureate

Glaring anomalies in the uni entry system are benefiting a small cohort of students who study the International Baccalaureate.

St Andrew’s Cathedral School head of school John Collier with students Emma Askham and Matthew Sgroi-Smith. Picture: John Feder

Glaring anomalies in the university entry system are benefiting a small cohort of students who study the International Baccalaureate, at the expense of other high-flying students, an investigation by The Weekend Australian has found.

The revelation has fuelled claims some private schools are using the IB — a globally focused program mostly taught here in independent schools — to game entry to the nation’s most coveted degrees. These schools deny the charge.

The Universities Admissions Centre, the education body that converts students’ Year 12 results into tertiary admission ranks, or ATARs, acknowledged the anomalies and admitted they were causing unease.

UAC marketing manager Kim Paino said: “Any situation where there’s a different way of reporting (students’) results, there’s going to be some sort of anomalies coming through.’’

One anomaly relates to ­scaling, and is adversely affecting gifted students aiming for a top ATAR of 99.95 — a conduit to medicine degrees and prestigious tertiary scholarships in Australia and overseas.

In NSW, HSC students’ final results are scaled, while IB ­students’ results are not. This means the number of maximum ATARs for HSC students is ­effectively capped at 0.05 per cent of their population age ­cohort. Yet the number of top ATARs awarded to IB students is unlimited, provided students achieve 45 out of 45 in their exams and assessments.

This discrepancy also affects Year 12 students who study scaled, state curriculums outside NSW, including Victoria’s Certificate of Education.

Compounding the problem, Ms Paino said, was the fact IB students were marked out of 45 (HSC students are marked out of 500), leading to “coarse’’ results with little room for differentiation. “These very coarse ­results mean that you may get more students at particular ranks than you would in other situations,’’ she said.

Sydney private school Trinity Grammar recently revealed that nine of its 2018 Year 12 students had received perfect IB scores (and 99.95 ATARs) — an IB ­record for Australia. On this measure, Trinity — which came 111th in HSC league tables — outperformed the selective public­ and private schools James Ruse Agricultural High, North Sydney Boys High and Sydney Grammar, which took out the top three places in the 2018 HSC.

Asked whether some IB schools were capitalising on ATAR conversion anomalies and gaming entry into prestigious ­university courses, Mohan Dhall, Australian Tutoring Association chief executive and a University of Technology lecturer, replied: “Of course.”

Mr Dhall has tutored or taught IB and HSC economics students and found some IB students “are poorer achievers than my HSC students, yet they will actually ­obtain a higher ATAR’’. He said the problem went beyond the very top students. “If students are working hard … to get into a course, why should someone in a school be disadvantaged, simply because they chose to do the curriculum of their state?’’ he said.

Trinity headmaster Tim Bowden said conversion of IB diploma results to ATARs was “properly” carried out by UAC, independently of schools. He said one half of Trinity’s 2018 Year 12 cohort studied the IB.

“Students who choose the IB diploma tend to be our high-­potential learners … These are boys who would have done very well in the HSC,’’ Mr Bowden said.

He said 12 of these students achieved the top HSC band when they undertook accelerated maths in Year 10.

Out of 2732 Australian stud­ents who completed the 2018 IB diploma across 73 schools, 28 achieved a perfect score of 45. This means one in 98 of these students attained a 99.95 ATAR. University admission statistics show that 46 of 56,000 2018 HSC students — about one in 1200 who received an ATAR — scored 99.95.

John Collier, head of school at St Andrew’s Cathedral School, Sydney, said it was “extremely difficult­’’ for an IB student to achieve a perfect score; his school had never had one.

He conceded Trinity’s nine top scores were surprising. “Other schools have had multiple students gaining a 45, but that’s a very high number,’’ Dr Collier said.

He said St Andrew’s treated the HSC and IB diploma as “equal, ­excellent choices’’. However, the school’s IB brochure highlights how final IB scores are not scaled and “this can result in a very favourable final ATAR’’ for the most capable students.

St Andrew’s Year 12 student Emma Askham said she chose the IB because it allowed her a high level of independence, so she could incorporate “my own ideas into my own learning’’. Fellow student Matthew Sgroi-Smith opted for the HSC because he was more comfortable with its “class-based’’ and “lesson-based” ­approach and it allowed him to specialise in English and history.

In 2013, the MLC School, a non-­selective independent girls school in Sydney’s inner west, produced eight IB graduates with top ATARs. Ms Paino revealed that this led to talks with the IB organ­isation about the need for it to ­provide “finer-grained results’’ ­allowing for more “differentiation of student achievement’’.

She hinted that reforms were being considered to make ATAR conversions fairer.