ATAR — Scaled for Injustice? Or just irrelevance?
Event Details
Online webinar
4 September 2020
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion will present a webinar on 4 September 2020 as part of the Future of Education – Towards 2027 series.
Join Peter Shergold AC, Viv White AM, Mehrdad Baghai, Sally Kift, and Verity Firth in discussion on whether the ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) is reproducing inequities.
Many students—particularly from underrepresented communities—do not meet traditional criteria to access higher education, yet show great potential to succeed. At the same time, industry and employers are calling for graduates with 21st century skills like collaboration, critical thinking, digital literacy, and interpersonal skills — all absent from the ATAR ranking system.
This event will reimagine how universities can make visible the currently invisible, recognise ‘soft’ skills, and ensure diversity of voice and experience by embracing future-focused assessment and tracking of capabilities.
This is the first event in the Future of Education — Towards 2027 series, presented by UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion. The series considers what universities can do to make access to education equitable in a future weighed down by financial unease, changing social conditions and unrest.
Keynote
- Professor Peter Shergold AC is the Chancellor of Western Sydney University. He chairs the NSW Education Standards Authority and has recently headed a panel which presented a report to the COAG Education Council. Entitled Looking to the Future, it calls for bold reform of senior secondary education.
Panel
- Viv White AM is the co-founder and CEO of Big Picture Education Australia, an organisation whose core business is ‘reimagining education’ in response to a rapidly-changing world. In 2018 Viv was appointed to the Order of Australia for her services to education and to the reengagement of young people in learning for life.
- Mehrdad Baghai is the co-founder, chairman, and global CEO of High Resolves – an organisation growing the abilities of young people to have the intention, skills, vision, creativity and confidence to act as global citizens, in the long-term collective interest of humanity.
- Professor Sally Kift is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and elected President of the Australian Learning & Teaching Fellows. She was a member of the Australian Qualifications Framework Review Panel that reported to Government in September 2019.
- Facilitated by The Hon. Verity Firth, Executive Director of Social Justice at UTS.