From Textiles to French Extension: How HSC subject ATAR scaling has changed – and why

Textiles and Design is among the courses which have seen average scores shift over the past decade, but the University Admissions Centre says there’s a good reason for that.

Large fluctuations in how HSC subjects are scaled have been recorded over the past decade, with pupils studying Textiles and Design being more likely to have their results scaled down when their ATAR is calculated compared to a decade ago.

That subject had 14.7 marks taken away in scaling when students’ Australian Tertiary Education Rank (ATAR) was calculated in 2011 but that increased to having 16.4 marks taken away last year.

NSW University Admissions Centre’s Kim Paino said smaller courses often saw changing effects year by year because the average mark for the course could change more easily because there was only a handful of students doing the course compared to the tens of thousands completing the most popular courses.

“Smaller courses are really hard, if you have a smaller cohort, their results would have a bigger impact on the scaled (average) mark,” she said.

Last year the Maths Extension 2 course, French Extension and Maths Extension 1 were the best scaling subjects in the HSC, as is usually the case.

Year 12 students (L-R) Nikolaos Kabouris-Horne, Sahara Hunt and Ruby Firmstone at Sydney Secondary College after sitting their HSC Ancient History exam on Wednesday. Picture: Julian Andrews

But Ms Paino said studying those subjects would not necessarily garner a higher ATAR.

“When we’re talking to students in Year 10 about what to choose, what students should really be doing is choosing the courses that interest you and you feel like you can perform well in,” she said.

UAC’s Kim Paino

“Where it becomes trickier is for very high performing students, who want to achieve a place in a highly competitive university course … they will do well no matter what subjects they choose.”

But that advice did not apply to average students who should not choose courses simply based on favourable scaling.

“If they’re in a course that they’re not going to perform well in, the higher (scaling) is not going to help them,” she said.

Matrix Education founder DJ Kim cautioned students to think carefully about their subject selection because many students were disappointed by the ATAR they received when exam results came out in December.

“The system has been created to introduce equity, fairness from an educational perspective but if a student is doing relatively ‘easy’ courses and getting a band six 90 HSC mark in that subject, they should know that might not be enough to get the ATAR you want,” he said.

He said that was because “easier” subjects were not scaled as favourably when compared to other subjects.

“It is like saying, ‘you’re holding a bunch of different currencies, we’re trying to compare who has more money, and the only way to do that is if we all convert the money into the same currency’,” he said.

Originally published as From Textiles to French Extension: How HSC subject ATAR scaling has changed – and why