You don’t need an ATAR to finish school, as record numbers of Victorian students are finding out for themselves. One in 25 students in the Victorian school system is opting to do an unscored VCE – where they complete the required schoolwork to pass year 12 but don’t have to take on exams or receive a numerical mark – or an alternative pathway such as vocational training. It’s a good sign that students may be starting to relax the view that someone’s ATAR is indicative of their talents, or the future opportunities available to them.

Research from the OECD found about half of Australian students experienced stress during their studies and exams.

I completed year 12 in 2007 and was lucky to do so at a school where we were reminded that a high ATAR was simply a useful thing to have when applying for uni, that there’s lots of paths to doing what you want – you can transfer degrees, study as a mature age student, do a postgraduate degree, do related vocational training, undertake bridging courses, etc.

Even with this message, it’s still hard at 17 or 18 years old to develop realistic expectations of what post-school life might be like. When you’re still a teenager, your whole life has likely followed a prescribed, linear pathway – year 9 follows year 8, and you’re doing all the same things your friends are. It felt like roundabout paths like degree transfers would constitute a consolation prize in the game of life. I didn’t understand that life is full of roundabout paths and that these journeys help you learn about yourself and can hold all sorts of surprising opportunities.

So, it felt like the future did essentially ride on what my ATAR was, which was an attitude shared by my peers as we spent hours anxiously typing in our predicted worst-case scenario scores using online ATAR calculators to double-check that our futures would be OK.