Eden Gray knew exactly what she wanted going into her senior year of high school. music. drama. books. topics that evoked strong emotions in her. During her final year at Stretton State College in Brisbane, she participated in six musical ensembles as a saxophonist and percussionist. She finished with an ATAR of 95.35. That is an impressive outcome by all standards.
What’s intriguing, though, is that her path is starting to become truly uncommon. And the reasons for making an uncomfortable statement about the direction Queensland’s education system has been stealthily taking for more than ten years.
Queensland’s Year 12 student enrollment in arts courses has decreased by more than 44% since 2012. Subjects that were formerly integrated into senior education, such as drama, music, dance, visual art, and film, are being quietly dropped. Approximately 23,000 students took at least one arts course in 2012. That figure had decreased to about 12,700 by 2021. Particularly in drama, the number of students fell from 6,500 to about 3,000 in less than ten years. Geography, history, and legal studies were among the humanities subjects that saw a 20% decline during that time.
In the meantime, enrollment in engineering more than doubled. It is difficult to misinterpret the story that the numbers convey.
The change coincides closely with Queensland’s adoption of the scaled ATAR system, which was implemented between 2017 and 2019 along with modifications to the Queensland Certificate of Education. During that time, Stephanie Tudor, president of Drama Queensland, was keeping an eye on enrolments when she noticed something almost instantly. “The biggest drop happened between 2017 and 2019 when the new QCE and ATAR system was introduced,” she stated. This might not be entirely coincidental.
A perception issue that acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy has been brought about by the ATAR scaling system, where a raw score of 80% may actually be worth more or less depending on the subject you’re taking. Subjects related to the arts have typically scale lower. Mathematics and science have advanced. As a result, students—and more specifically, the parents and counselors who counsel them—have begun to view choosing a subject more as a calculated strategy than as an indication of true aptitude.
According to Rachael Dwyer, a curriculum and pedagogy lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast, advisers are telling students that science and math are necessary for a high ATAR score. When high achievers hear that message, they quit the arts, which causes the arts subjects to drop even further since the best students are no longer enrolled in them. It’s a loop that’s very hard to escape.
The real student sitting in front of a subject choice form is what is lost in this computation. According to Eden Gray, science would have been extremely stressful for her. In contrast, she found true joy in the arts throughout Year 12. There’s a feeling that chasing a number is systematically discouraging this kind of self-knowledge, which is understanding where you truly perform and are engaged.
The principal of Brisbane Girls Grammar School, Jacinda Euler, has been somewhat irritated by this pattern. According to her, scaling has a much smaller practical impact than students think, especially for those who are near the top of a subject cohort. “The reality is,” she stated, “that any subject that you pursue at secondary school, if you perform very well at the top of that subject, scaling will have minimal impact.” Sitting with that is worthwhile.
Whether Queensland’s policymakers are addressing this as the serious structural issue it seems to be is still up for debate. The direction of travel has been known for years, so the data is not new. It’s getting harder to ignore the possibility that Queensland is quietly producing fewer students, thinkers, and workers as a result of an education system that is increasingly focused on a single ranking number. No ATAR report will include that expense.
