College marks ‘pass the test’

Minister defends end-of-year score

EDUCATION Minister Jeremy Rockliff has denied any problems with this year’s ATAR scores despite an admission from the schools assessment authority of some miscalculations of results.

In a letter to Mr Rockliff, seen by the Mercury, a parent said her daughter received Zs in the English Writing unit — a course which the letter said was the student’s strongest class.

“Based on my daughter’s distress at getting Z and a lower ATAR than she should, I can only imagine how those students who got no ATAR felt when they opened their results,” the letter read.

“We need an explanation for why this occurred, and we need to know what is being done to give her a proper mark.”

This is the third year in a row an issue has arisen with college students’ end-of-year points — a problem Labor’s Josh Willie said the State Government had “embarrassed itself” with.

“The Office of Tasmanian Assessment, Standards and Certification has a history of making mistakes, including the end of last year when ATAR results had to be recalled because they were wrong,” he said.

But Mr Rockliff said claims of miscalculated ATAR results were wrong. “There were no miscalculations. Students can apply for university courses with confidence,” he said.

When asked about claims of miscalculated results a TASC spokeswoman said some incorrect marks occurred due to “human error”.

“There has been a very small number — less than five

— of instances relating to a Z result in English,” the spokeswoman said.

“It appears that these can be traced back to human error within the school.”

Australian Education Union deputy president secondary colleges Peta-Maree Revell-Cook said she had heard of miscalculations for “hundreds of students” over a number of TCE and VET courses.

“As of Thursday morning we received verification that VET students across the state had a mix-up with their points which will need to be reassessed,” she said.

“We have students in TCE courses who weren’t awarded points, and the ATAR points for the Asian Studies unit weren’t awarded.”

A TASC spokeswoman said no Asian Studies results were calculated incorrectly.