Chances are you’ll be accustomed to the favored TikTok development, #ATARreaction. You see the face of a 12 months 12 scholar logging on to their pc, then they wait just a few moments earlier than they collapse in tears, reduction and celebration.
You’ve simply witnessed them obtain their remaining outcomes.
It’s 12 months 12 outcomes season round Australia. Earlier this week, Victorian and New South Wales college students bought their marks. Ends in Queensland are out as we speak, with Western Australia and South Australia due on Monday.
Accompanying these scores will probably be numerous celebrations and commiserations, as ideas flip to life after college. There may be additionally an enormous neighborhood focus — by way of the media — on college students who obtain excellent or near-perfect scores.
The identical sorts of tales give attention to the very excessive achievers every year. Whereas this will likely look like a joyous ritual, we should always pause to contemplate how we body the tip of 12 months 12 and “success”, and the way we will help college students navigate these turbulent instances.
There’s a distinct sample to the tales about outcomes every year.
For many years, we’ve been conditioned to anticipate the reporting of ecstatic eventualities, with college students celebrating excessive or excellent scores and speaking about their emotions and plans.
A choice of headlines this week embody, “Virtually excellent in each manner,” “The highest scholar in each HSC topic revealed”, “Pleasure at HSC band 5s and 6s” and “Meet the duxes of 2023”.
There are additionally retrospectives on previous college students who’ve excelled and showcases of faculties with essentially the most prime college students.
Social media has solely exacerbated these public shows, with ATAR “response movies” garnering tens of millions of views on platforms like TikTok.
This reinforces a set narrative to receiving your outcomes: you get them and are instantly overjoyed. Whereas these college students ought to — and have each proper to — have a good time their achievements, not all college students will really feel this manner.
A slim definition of success
Alongside these scores for particular person topics, many college students can even obtain an ATAR rating, which tertiary establishments use to assist choose candidates.
Disproportionately specializing in excellent scores and rankings narrowly defines what success may be. Certainly, as a result of the ATAR is a percentile rank, these excellent scores are solely ever attainable for a handful of scholars.
Additionally it is value remembering that every one such scores and rankings are to simplify a really difficult and sophisticated phenomenon — scholar studying.
Any “one dimension matches all” method overlooks how success will probably be completely different for various individuals.
For some, it could be finishing 12 months 12 regardless of appreciable private hardship or drawback. For others, it might be securing entrance to their most popular course and college.
Failing to embrace various definitions of success fails to acknowledge the circumstances and contexts of scholars and communities. It impacts not solely this 12 months’s cohort but additionally youthful college students who’re uncovered to this media protection and are conditioned to assume that is what success is.
How can we method it this time?
There are numerous methods we will overcome this one-dimensional view of education success. However it requires an intentional shift to the best way faculties, politicians, the media and the broader neighborhood perceive and talk about ATAR rankings.
First, we should always overtly acknowledge there’s extra to life than ATAR and being on an honour roll.
We should always publicly have a good time not solely the “virtually excellent” but additionally the numerous completely different sorts of success our college students obtain.
Not each scholar will even obtain an ATAR (some decide to not), as this rating is just used to find out entrance to some programs at some tertiary establishments. Many universities supply locations to college students with out utilizing ATAR rankings, together with pathway choices (comparable to upgrading to bachelor programs by means of diplomas and affiliate levels), vocational examine and different entry schemes.
Put in a different way, the ATAR solely helps decide a scholar’s entry right into a college or course proper now. It doesn’t decide which college course they’ll finally enter and full by way of these extra potentialities.
Second, we should always emphasise studying is a lifelong course of.
This 12 months’s 12 months 12s will encounter many various academic wants and alternatives over their lifetime. This may entail formal schooling by way of universities and TAFEs, but additionally on-the-job skilled or vocational coaching and micro-credentialing.
These choices will doubtless don’t have anything to do with a scholar’s ATAR.
Third, and maybe most significantly, we should always encourage college students to share any anxieties they’ve with their dad and mom and friends.
By publicly discussing the a number of pathways into college and what the ATAR truly means, faculties, universities and households will help college students minimise their psychological well being considerations.
Test in with one another, each within the lead-up to outcomes and within the days and weeks after. Above all else, remind college students they’re at all times greater than a rating.
The piece was first revealed by The Dialog.
