Beyond the ATAR: Rethinking What Senior School is Really For

For too long, the final years of school in Australia have been framed as a high-stakes sprint to a number - the ATAR. It's the yardstick students feel they must meet, the benchmark schools use to showcase academic success, and the metric parents often focus on to determine future opportunity.

But here’s the truth: senior school isn’t just an ATAR treadmill. And it was never meant to be.

The ATAR illusion

The ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) is simply a ranking tool, used primarily to allocate university placements for school leavers. That’s all. It’s not a certificate. It’s not a measure of intelligence or worth. And it certainly doesn’t capture the full scope of a young person’s skills, passions or potential.

Yet over time, ATAR has become the default narrative in senior schooling, and it’s doing more harm than good.

The pressure to “get the number” can narrow learning, create anxiety, and sideline the many valuable experiences that senior school should offer: identity development, real-world learning, capability building and future-ready preparation.

Let’s look at the data

In 2023, 42% of university entrants did not use their ATAR for admission. That’s nearly half of all school-leaver offers made through alternative entry pathways:

• vocational education and training (VET) qualifications

• portfolio or audition-based entry

• bridging or enabling courses

• equity and access schemes

• school recommendation programs

Add to this the fact that only around 39% of school leavers go directly into university after Year 12, and it becomes clear: Most students either don’t use an ATAR, or don’t need one.

So why does it continue to dominate the narrative?

More pathways, not fewer

There’s a growing diversity of post-school success stories, and they’re not all ATAR-bound. Students are pursuing:

• TAFE and VET qualifications that lead to in-demand, skilled careers

• entrepreneurial ventures and creative industries

• apprenticeships and traineeships with strong earning potential

• alternate university routes that don’t rely on exams

In other words, ATAR is just one path, not the path.

The cost of the single narrative

When ATAR is treated as the only marker of success, we risk:

• sidelining students whose strengths lie in applied or creative domains

• undervaluing capabilities like collaboration, resilience and ethical leadership

• pushing teachers to narrow curriculum delivery

• ignoring the future-focused dispositions young people will actually need

Worse still, we risk implicitly or explicitly telling young people that if they don’t “get the number,” they’ve failed.

Schools Breaking the Mould: Silkwood School (Gold Coast, QLD)

Silkwood School on the Gold Coast is an inspiring example of a school redefining senior education. Rather than framing success solely around ATAR results, Silkwood offers a truly personalised learning experience that balances academic skills with real-world engagement and passion projects.

Silkwood’s “Silkwood Way” is a fully personalised, student‑centred model that rejects exam‑focused schooling in favour of real-world learning and self‑directed passion projects.

Their senior campus (Years 10–12) is designed to support students in discovering and pursuing their individual interests while building essential literacy, numeracy, and 21st-century skills. Their program is based around three strands:

• Core (essential literacy & numeracy)

• Essential (21st‑century thinking & real‑world skills)

• Personalised learning (driven by student passion areas)

Students also engage in internships, entrepreneurial challenges, and mentorships alongside core academic learning. This focus on entrepreneurial thinking, capability building, resilience, and community connection is a key pillar of the program, and explicitly not ATAR-driven.

Silkwood’s approach proves that it’s possible to maintain academic rigour and growth, without the pressure and narrow focus of the ATAR race. This model prepares students not just for exams, but for diverse futures beyond school, whether that’s university, TAFE, entrepreneurship, or community leadership.

What senior school should be

Senior schooling should be about preparing students for diverse futures. That means:

• Offering meaningful choice in learning

• Recognising multiple ways of knowing, creating and contributing

• Developing transferable capabilities

• Providing clear, supported transitions to a range of destinations

• Celebrating the whole learner, not just the exam-ready one

It also means creating space for purpose, wellbeing, and identity formation: the things that shape thriving adults, not just successful students.

Time to shift the story

The ATAR isn’t going away anytime soon. But it’s time we put it in perspective, as one tool among many, not the goalpost for all.

As educators, parents, and systems, we have a responsibility to broaden the narrative and design senior learning environments that value relevance, choice, capability and purpose.

Because every young person deserves more than a rank.They deserve a future that reflects who they are, and what they can become.