You’re not your ATAR

The great HSC gauntlet is over and now tens of thousands of students across New South Wales are wondering whether it was all worth it.

Get a good mark in the HSC, get into a good university and then you’ll get a job; it’s the conventional thinking but some students are criticising whether the HSC is the right way to measure a student‘s worth.

Meklit Kibret, an 18 year-old aspiring jazz musician who recently completed year 12 at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts, said: “I’m never going to need to analyse Shakespeare.”

Given her career aspirations, she cannot see the significance of the university admission scores: the ATAR.

“You don’t need a mark for [music]. If you’re good, you’re good.”

“If I were interested in medicine or being a lawyer, I would be into my ATAR but I’m not. So it really depends on what you want to do in your life.”

She was also critical of the way the HSC turns into not just the primary focus of senior high school students, but the sole concern.

“It becomes the be-all and end-all of their life. They can’t see anything else, any other future. It’s stupid. We’ve got heaps of opportunities here. It’s not like if you mess up the HSC that’s it.”

Marc Valpiani, who also recently finished his exams at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts, questions of whether the HSC exams are a good measure of a person’s merit.

“It’s a narrow way of testing. They’re testing one thing: your ability to write an essay, closed book, in a limited amount of time. They don’t test critical thinking or speaking. You can get tutored and then go into the exam, rote learn an essay, get into a good uni. But it doesn’t really reflect how smart you are.”

Ms Meklit said there is a perception that your mark is your worth. She said this is a misguided attitude.

“A percentage should not rate you. It’s just a number,” she said.

“Are you a nice person? Do you try your best?”

Mr Valpiani said there needs to be some form of standardised testing and valued his economics and modern history courses. Ms Meklit said one day she would be grateful for the experience.

“There will probably be a moment where I’m like: ‘I did it.’”

By Dominic Dietrich