Students affected by a change in their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank will not be disadvantaged in tertiary admission, the office responsible for the bungle has confirmed.
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The Tasmanian Assessment, Standards and Certification office reissued the ATARs of Tasmanian students late on Tuesday night after identifying an error earlier that day.
TASC executive officer Katrina Beams apologised to students for the angst they must be feeling in relation to the error and said she was confident the new ATAR results were accurate.
“We apologise to students, parents, and teachers for this error; we are very conscious of the effect it would have had,” she said.
Education Minister Jeremy Rockliff released the details of the error on Wednesday morning, declaring that an audit of TASC’s business processes had been ordered.
“The audit will look into the business processes undertaken by the department in supplying critical data to TASC and UTAS,” he said.
Ms Beams said the error was identified when UTAS, which acts as a tertiary admissions centre in Tasmania, alerted them to the potential for incorrect ATAR scores.
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It was identified that a processing error had occurred in relation to the upload of students’ data.
As a result, UTAS halted its admissions process until the error had been rectified.
All 2215 Tasmanian students who are eligible for an ATAR have been reissued with their correct ATAR score.
Of those 2215 students, 1608 students had a change to their ATAR ranking.
About 67 students had their ATAR changed up by more than on ATAR point and about 38 students’ ATAR changed down by more than one ATAR point.
Ms Beams would not confirm by the scale of the ATAR changes and how much students ranks were affected.
Opposition Education spokeswoman Michelle O’Byrne said she was concerned the issues at TASC ran deeper than the most recent processing error.
She said issues with exams last year, along with consistent issues over the number of markers pointed to there being potential ‘systemic’ issues within TASC.
“The question is, how deep is the problem?” she said.
Ms O’Byrne said she was seeking a briefing from the Minister and the department on the issue, which she hoped to have this week before Christmas.
“The issues need to be fixed now, it’s six weeks before university starts, families don’t have time to wait for the outcome of a review,” she said.
She said more needed to be done to ensure the process was transparent and gave families an outlet to dispute a mark if they felt it was warranted.
Ms Beams said the department, TASC and UTAS had worked closely together to resolve the issue to ensure it would not affect university admissions.
“While we did work quickly, we understand the impact this would have had on students,” she said.
About 2000 ATARs were issued across Tasmania on Tuesday and all of them had to be recalculated once the error had been identified.
However, not all students had their ATARs corrected, whether it be up or down, as some were unaffected by the error.
Australian Education Union Tasmania deputy president Peta-Maree Revell-Cook said “it was no surprise” that this error had occurred.
“Senior secondary committee of management, as recently as two weeks ago, brought these issues to the attention of the Minister,” Ms Revell-Cook said.
“This fiasco is clearly the Minister’s responsibility as he has been repeatedly warned of the concerns raised by 11/12 sector teachers and their lack of confidence in the processes undertaken by TASC.”
To assist with students who have been affected by the scores, TASC has set up a hotline for anyone who wants to discuss their ATAR changes.
Students can contact 6777 2403 or go online to TASC’s website.
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