The games we play: ATAR as sorting hat

Why do we have the ‘Asian 5’?

Whilst teaching ITE students I get to explain the inner workings of the final years of schooling and the games we play to sort our students. It is often a game that not all students know how to play, and that some schools are better than others at shaping the playing field for students.

Here are some key ways the playing field is never fair:

• Subject selection and the ‘Asian 5’

• Text selection within English subjects

• ‘Special consideration’ within examinations 

• Tutors and student lectures

Subject selection and the ‘Asian 5’

For those who are unaware, the ‘Asian 5’ subjects are: Maths Methods; Physics; An English; Chemistry; and Biology. These subjects are the ‘best’ set of subjects you can select to maximise your scores. WIthin that, you may choose say English Language (Mulder & Thomas, 2022), or Literature; or if at all possible EAL, as these are among the higher scoring (meaning ‘scaled up’ options). These 5 subjects are known across Australia, by teachers perhaps surreptitiously, but widely discussed by students, and perhaps also parents. These subjects also contain the prerequisites for the types of courses that might be viewed favorably within society as well. 

This series of subjects is rather unimaginative in its grounding in the reality of scaling within the ATAR system, that essentially means if you do those subjects society has deemed ‘most difficult’ then your scores will reflect this.

As an illustration,  “More students from advantaged backgrounds study subjects that will get them a higher ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank) in New South Wales, while students from lower socioeconomic families are over-represented in subjects that contribute less to the score.” (Roberts et al., 2019). So the very subjects chosen are sorting students into categories long before they even leave school. 

Perhaps, I’m a naive optimist, but I would like to live in a world where students subject selections were made around personal interest, rather than a neoliberal framing pointed directly at jobs and careers in law and medicine - but hey, maybe I’m just writing crazy here. 

Text selection within English subjects

Within one of my areas, English teaching, students and schools are provided with a series of texts which they can choose. These range across text types and topics. However, and importantly, a wise school, and a wise VCE teacher will choose those texts that make their students most likely to succeed. 

So for example, if I’m teaching or leading in a well-off Private school, we may select: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen. Knowing that such a 448 page behemoth of a book is unlikely to be selected by less privileged schools and gives our students a clear advantage. Now if I’m teaching with a strong Muslim population, such as within a Islamic school, we will select a text that features this religion, giving our students a head start in the cultural capital and background knowledge required. For example a text like: ‘I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban’ by Malala Yousafza would be a good fit. 

These are but two examples, but they show a little bit about how the system can be ‘optimised’ or ‘gamed’ to benefit schools and their students - or perhaps simply to give students their best chance - depending on how you see it.

‘Special consideration’ within examinations 

Now this could be tin-foil hat stuff, but the going discussion was that private schools overwhelmingly applied for special consideration when compared to public schools. Now this runs counter to what we know about disabled students, who overwhelmingly are being taught in public schools. For example, “The proportion of high disability students in public schools is 76.2% while 23.8% were enrolled in private schools.” (Cobbold, 2021). 

This contrasts against, the “Figures show 62 per cent of students given special consideration came from private schools. Private school students are twice as likely as those from state schools to get special consideration, with experts saying it could be due to the “excessive pressure” to get good exam results.”, according to a Herald Sun article entitled ‘Stressed out private school students given VCE help’. 

Now there are more than just disability reasons that can lead to special consideration, but the numbers do show a relatively odd trend. Indeed suggesting that mental health concerns may well be more concerning in Private schools. Though it is prudent not to jump to any wild conclusions based on only two data points.

Tutors and student lectures

Unlike say South Korea, where tutoring is a pernicious and consistent issue (Bae et al., 2023), in Australia it is a player in separating the students as well. Similarly student lectures and support provided by the school is another way to separate and segment. This might sound like an extreme over-generalisation, but consider two students studying Japanese, one who has been to Japan numerous times, and one who has not, and unlikely could afford to attend. Even within the possibility of tutors, there is a wild difference in quality available, between say a former-student who received a 99.5, and so on. Money talks, and tutors walk to areas where the pay is best. 

Overall ATAR is far from a level playing field, with a system that rewards students willing to work hard, swallow their interests and pursue those fields that have the shiniest numbers attached to them. 

Is this right? I’ll let you decide, let me know what you think?

References

Bae, S. H., & Choi, K. H. (2023). The cause of institutionalized private tutoring in Korea: Defective public schooling or a universal desire for family reproduction?. ECNU Review of Education, 20965311231182722.

Cobbold, T. (2021)The Disadvantage Burden of Public Schools is Three Times That of Private Schools. SAVE OUR SCHOOLS. 

Mulder, J., & Thomas, C. (2022). Evaluating VCE English language twenty years on. English in Australia, 56(3), 5-23.

Roberts, P., Dean, J., & Lommatsch, G. (2019). Still winning? Social inequity in the NSW senior secondary curriculum hierarchy. Rural Education and Communities research group..

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