ALL THE BEST FOR THE FUTURE
All the best to the people of Griffith in the upcoming election.
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I enjoyed my time in Griffith in late 1965, making many friends along the way. One of the highlights was opening the then MTN 9 in Remembrance Drive on December 15, 1965.
Now unfortunately in disrepair. To the lovely people of Griffith all the best to you for the future.
Brian Smith, former chief announcer, MTN 9 until 1968
NOW'S THE TIME TO CONSIDER ATAR CHANGES
There is a way forward with the HSC. It is not all doom and gloom.
As a former member of the peak academic board of a university, I read quite a lot of people commenting on the role of the HSC and ATAR and how it could be administered this year. I'd like to add my suggestions.
In the context of university admission, the HSC and ATAR is a ranking system to place students in a position of highest achiever to lowest achiever across NSW.
How the HSC and ATAR are used by a university is quite simple. Each year, a vice-chancellor of a university must submit student numbers to the federal education minister on how many federally funded places they will seek to fill.
That number is made up by each head of a school reporting how many places they can comfortably teach and likely fill to the vice-chancellor.
If, for example, the vice-chancellor expects a university can accommodate 13000 students, that number will be supplied to the federal education minister for approval and the university will be funded accordingly.
Then given the high rates of attrition of recent HSC graduates, most universities operate a system that is designed to maximise the returns to a university to avoid issues associated with attrition.
Essential, full fee-paying students are admitted to courses first. Their funding is guaranteed. Next, mature age students are offered places (80 per cent likely completion). Next, early entry students are offered places (again higher rates of completion) and finally, as a way to fill the mass number of seats remaining, the positions, which may be only a few for some courses, are offered on mass to HSC applicants.
The ATAR system is used to competitively rank who will receive an offer to the final remaining seats available in a course.
This enrolment process presents a large problem. The attrition rate is quite large and leads to inefficient use of federal funds as many students are choosing courses, not completely based on what interests them, but what their ATAR score they believe they will achieve.
This year, because of COVID, we have a very good opportunity to modify the HSC admission system by removing ATAR and the University Admission Centre process.
We could, under emergency measures, introduce and follow the British model of student reporting for the HSC. In that model, schools could introduce a system that allows schools to simply report A to E, nothing more.
Universities would then need to indicate the minimum academic standard the students would need to apply, and students would apply directly to the University of their choosing (maybe multiple) to seek entry for their course based on the grade they receive or likely to receive.
Such a change will avoid the issues which current exist around the pandemic with the HSC, allow students to be recognised for their extra and co-curricular activities. The benefit to the nation is that we will see reduced attrition rates and the introduction of a more efficient post-school reporting system which is in line with university business/admission models.
All we need is an education minister who dares to move away from using the ATAR system as a way to process the masses of students and give that responsibility to the universities (and the students).
Many students will benefit.
Greg Adamson, Griffith
HAVE YOUR SAY!
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