Premier Mark McGowan calls for review of uni entry pathways in response to drop in students doing ATAR exams

Mark McGowan has called for a review of WA’s university entry pathways, saying they sent the “wrong message” by making it too easy for Year 12s to qualify. The Premier blamed universities for offering students places well before they sat their exams in response to revelations last week that WA’s share of Year 12s studying Australian Tertiary Admission Rank subjects has dropped to 33.7 per cent — the second lowest in the nation. Mr McGowan acknowledged the State Government did not control universities, but he believed their entry pathways required analysis. “I think the idea that you get into university without having either done ATAR, or having even done well on your exams, is sending the wrong message,” he said. Mr McGowan said he had recently gone through Year 12 exams twice in his own household. “You get the early offers way before the ATAR is undertaken,” he said. “So people see a pathway to university where you don’t have to necessarily do ATAR, or necessarily try hard. “It’s very different to my day where everything depended on the results you got in Year 12 as to where you went and what course you did. “I think this needs review as to whether this is wise. Because you want students in Year 12 to be learning as much as they can and understanding that life does actually have tests and pressure and those sorts of things involved in it. “And sometimes exams are part of that, and achieving outcomes are part of that, and if you can do it in Year 12 you can do it anywhere.” Speaking at the same press conference, held to announce a joint Federal and State Government injection of $112 million to provide 18,800 fee-free TAFE and vocational education and training places next year, Education Minister Sue Ellery attributed the ATAR decline to early offers and the increase in alternative entry paths. Ms Ellery denied that education standards had slipped, because people were still going to university. “They’re just getting there a different way,” she said. “But it is an interesting phenomenon.” “What we want is students to be challenged,” she added. “We want them to work hard and to study hard and if that means doing a high level qualification in VET, great. If that means studying for ATAR or getting to university, great, but we want them to be challenged.” Tertiary Institutions Service Centre chair Andrew Taggart last week partly blamed the publication of school league tables for the drop in ATAR participation, claiming they encouraged some schools to shunt students out of ATAR courses so they did not bring down a school’s median rank. But Ms Ellery said there was no evidence that schools were pushing students out of ATAR courses, or that league tables played a big role. “What I do know is that universities, because of the business model that they now operate under, are offering different pathways to get into university and it’s pretty hard to judge if that is the major driver of it, or if it’s something that schools are doing,” she said.