HSC versus International Baccalaureate: a test of fairness
Are HSC students disadvantaged by the marks awarded to a rival certificate?
Fourteen years ago, Mohan Dhall was working as a Year 12 economics tutor and teacher. By day he taught the subject to NSW Higher School Certificate students, and after hours he tutored five private school students who were studying the International Baccalaureate diploma program.
His top student — an IB student — gained a perfect overall mark of 45 and went on to study medicine at university. No surprises there: Dhall regarded this student as exceptional.
He was taken aback, however, by the high university entrance ranks, or ATARs, of the other IB students he was tutoring.
He considered these four students less smart than the HSC economics class he taught.
But when their IB results — ranging from 38 out of 45 to 43 out of 45 — were converted into ATARs, his IB students ended up with better ranks than their HSC counterparts.
“Apart from the top-achieving boy, all of them were weaker than the HSC students I taught in my normal teaching practice. I thought, ‘Why are they getting such high marks?’ ” Dhall recalls.
Now chief executive of the Australian Tutoring Association and a lecturer specialising in teaching methods at University of Technology Sydney, Dhall says that the anomalous trend favouring IB students has continued unchallenged.
“Teachers I have met have moved their children to (IB) schools for Years 11 and 12, specifically because they know that the ATAR that an IB student gets seems to map to a higher level than one for someone doing the HSC,” he says.
The IB — a globally focused study program originally developed in Europe for the children of travelling executives and diplomats — is gaining popularity in Australia, partly because universities around the world recognise it.
The Year 11-12 diploma, which emphasises breadth and independent research, is offered by 73 schools here, most of them exclusive private schools including Sydney’s Trinity Grammar and MLC School, Brisbane’s Anglican Church Grammar School and Victoria’s Geelong Grammar. It is not taught in public schools in NSW, despite calls for the NSW government to introduce it.
An investigation by The Weekend Australian has identified serious loopholes in the mechanisms used to convert Year 12 students’ final IB and HSC scores into university entry ranks.
These loopholes are creating advantage for a small, mostly privately educated cohort of IB students at the expense of the mass of Australian students following state-based curriculums.
This, in turn, is fuelling claims that some private schools are using the IB to game the university entry system for the nation’s most sought-after degrees. Dhall, who has taught in private schools, tells The Weekend Australian that “of course” some private schools are doing this.
A leading education expert who does not want to be named agrees, pointing out that often in NSW the private schools with the biggest cohorts of IB students were not those that had traditionally aced the HSC.
The ATAR conversion anomalies arise partly because of scaling: the final results of HSC students are scaled, but raw IB Diploma results are not.
This means the proportion of maximum 99.95 ATARs awarded to HSC students is effectively capped at 0.05 per cent of their population age cohort, while the number of perfect ATARs awarded to IB students is unlimited, provided students achieve an overall mark of 45. (The situation for Victoria’s Certificate of Education students is very similar.)
The Universities Admissions Centre, which converts Year 12 students’ results into ATARs, has admitted the discrepancy. UAC marketing manager Kim Paino says: “Any situation where there’s a different way of reporting (students’) results, there’s going to be some sort of anomalies coming through.’’
Exacerbating the problem, Paino says, is the fact that unlike HSC students, who are marked out of 500, IB students are marked out of 45. This has led to “coarse’’ results with little room for differentiation between marks.
“The very fact that we get these very coarse (IB) results means that you may get more students at particular ranks than you would in other situations,’’ she says.
Concerns have focused on disparity between the numbers of IB and HSC students achieving the perfect 99.95 ATAR, a mark that can mean direct entry into medicine courses and scholarship programs at prestigious universities here and abroad, including Cambridge and Harvard.
In January, the Sydney private school Trinity Grammar announced that nine of its 2018 IB Diploma students had achieved perfect scores of 45, which translate to 99.95 ATARs.
This haul was an Australian record for an IB school. It also raised eyebrows, as it meant that non-selective Trinity, which was ranked 111th on the 2018 HSC league table, had achieved more perfect ATARs than the state’s three top-performing selective schools, both public and private. Trinity’s nine perfect ATAR equivalents beat the seven achieved by James Ruse Agricultural High, which teaches only the HSC and has topped HSC league tables for the past 23 years.
Trinity offers the IB and the HSC, and its headmaster, Tim Bowden, says that roughly half the school’s Year 12 students studied the IB in 2018. Its 2019 IB cohort of 105 students is one of the world’s biggest. “The Trinity students who choose the IB Diploma tend to be our high-potential learners,’’ he says. “ … These are boys who would have done very well in the HSC.’’
He says the conversion of IB results to university entrance ranks is “properly the business of UAC’’, which is independent of schools.
He adds that “the IB Diploma provides an educational experience with demands akin to the rigours of tertiary study, perhaps more so than the various state-based credentials’’.
Of 2732 Australian students who completed the 2018 IB Diploma, at least 28, or one in 98, achieved a 99.95 ATAR.
By contrast, university admission statistics show that last year, roughly one in 1200 HSC students who received an ATAR obtained a 99.95 rank. (In Victoria the discrepancy is even wider, with just one in every 1316 VCE students who gained an ATAR receiving a 99.95 rank.)
While the ATAR disparity is conspicuous for the very top students, Dhall claims there is a “bigger issue’’ among the hundreds and possibly thousands of high achievers who obtain ATARs in the mid to high 90s.
He says official scaling statistics show that students with IB scores ranging from 39 to 42 (out of 45) could gain entry to prestigious university courses that were denied to more capable HSC students, because the scaled conversion from HSC to ATAR is less generous.
Degrees that fall into this marks category include law, actuarial studies and advanced commerce. Dhall argues: “The mapping is clearly advantageous to those who do the IB … You get far lower performing IB kids getting into courses that they wouldn’t be getting into had they done the HSC.’’
But any suggestion IB schools are gaming the university entry stakes is firmly denied by Antony Mayrhofer, who oversees the IB program at St Paul’s Grammar School in Sydney’s west.
Mayrhofer describes as “simplistic” the suggestion that it is easier to obtain a high ATAR through the IB than through the HSC or the VCE.
He warns that IB students who score less than 24 out of 45 are denied an IB Diploma and ATAR, whereas all HSC students who complete their assessments are given an ATAR. “There are lots of ways to fail the IB,’’ he says.
Originally developed in Switzerland, the IB is known for its breadth and global emphasis — students must study English, maths, science, a language and a humanities subject, and follow a program of community involvement. In addition, they must complete a research essay and a theory- of-knowledge subject.
John Collier, a former pupil at James Ruse and now head of St Andrews Cathedral School, says two-thirds of St Andrews students did the HSC, while the remainder sat the IB.
He tells The Weekend Australian: “Yes, a higher proportion of IB students will get 45 in the system, I suppose, than HSC students. That begs the question — is there something different between these two curriculums that actually leads to that? That’s not a question that’s been satisfactorily answered.’’
Over time, he says, the conversion table for IB has “gone down, not up, so it’s become more difficult, not easier, for IB students to do really well in the ATAR stakes”.
He says a perfect IB score is “extremely difficult” to attain: “We’ve never had anyone at this school get that kind of result.’’ St Andrews has taught the IB for 11 years.
Asked about Trinity’s nine perfect scores, Collier says: “It’s surprising mainly insofar as there are so many.
“Other schools have had multiple students gaining a 45, but that’s a very high number …. We treat the HSC and IB Diploma as equal, excellent choices.’’
Nonetheless, the school’s IB brochure highlights how, “unlike the HSC, there is no scaling of final scores’’ and this “can result in a very favourable final ATAR for students who are in the top end of the most capable students’’.
The IB organisation’s claim that its programs are extremely rigorous has not always stood up to scrutiny. In 2013, the Times Educational Supplement revealed that an IB guide for history examiners contained plagiarised material from websites including Wikipedia.
Then IB director-general Jeffrey Beard confirmed the breach of academic standards, which was treated with the “utmost urgency” to ensure it was not repeated.
Trinity’s record result is not the first time high IB results have raised questions about parity.
In 2013, the MLC School, a private, non-selective girls school in Sydney’s inner west, produced eight IB graduates with top ATARs. (In the same year, academic powerhouse James Ruse achieved six perfect ATARs.)
Paino says the MLC result “caused a bit of a flurry” and led to talks with the IB organisation that oversees IB schools.
She says: “UAC (in conjunction with all state tertiary admissions centres) has discussed with the IB organisation whether it can provide finer-grained results that would allow for a more nuanced differentiation of student achievement and an improved schedule.’’
She foreshadowed possible reforms aimed at making ATAR conversions fairer.
“UAC will keep (IB) students and schools informed of … any changes to the schedule that may result. Our aim always is that the admissions process is fair to all students, regardless of their background,” Paino says.
A spokesman for The Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre has confirmed that this body and the Australian Conference of Tertiary Admission Centres “continue to work with the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) to improve the comparability of the ranks’’.
For Dhall, the controversy swirling around IB students’ high ATARs is primarily about equity.
“If students are working hard in the last few years of schooling to get into a course, why should someone in a school be disadvantaged simply because they chose to do the curriculum of their state?
“That does seem problematic to me, and I think educators in schools would agree.”
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