Do Year 11 marks count towards the ATAR?

There is a sentence every Year 11 parent hears and half believes: the marks this year do not count. It is true in the narrowest sense. Preliminary course results do not appear in the ATAR calculation and are not reported to UAC. It is false in every sense that matters, because the first assessment of the HSC course sits in Term 4 of Year 11, before the year is even over, and the rank a student holds after that task is the starting position for a rank order that moderation carries all the way to the results notice. Year 11 is not the year that does not count. It is the year the counting is prepared.

Consider what moderation does. The school's internal assessment marks across Year 12 are adjusted against the cohort's external examination performance, but the order the school set is preserved. A student ranked fifth of forty after the Term 4 task starts the year fifth, and every subsequent task moves that position by increments. The students who arrive at the first task already running a weekly system of retrieval, timed practice and an error log are competing for the top ranks from day one. The students who intend to start such a system 'once Year 12 begins' are building the system and sitting the task in the same fortnight.

The second reason Year 11 matters is that it is the last cheap correction window for subject choices. A subject that is clearly wrong in Term 1 of Year 11 can usually be swapped with little cost. The same discovery in Term 1 of Year 12 means a year of a subject the student cannot lift, or a change that forfeits the work already done. Families who treat Year 11 marks as information about fit, rather than as marks that do or do not count, make the correction while it is still free.

The third reason is content. Every HSC course assumes its preliminary course. Year 12 mathematics assumes the Year 11 calculus is secure; Year 12 chemistry assumes the Year 11 quantitative chemistry; Year 12 English assumes the student can already construct an argument under time. A gap left in Year 11 does not disappear; it reappears in Year 12 as a lost mark on every question that touches it, and it is far more expensive to close then, because the year is full.

What does taking Year 11 seriously look like, given that the marks are not the point? It looks like treating the year as a rehearsal in which the marks are feedback. A weekly study block that happens whether or not homework is set. A timed practice question each week, marked against the criteria, with the lost marks written into an error log. The preliminary examinations sat under full conditions and reviewed as data about technique, not as a verdict. And a written plan, however short, for what the student will do differently in Term 4 when the counting begins.

The families who get the most from Year 11 are the ones who ask a different question at the end of each term. Not what mark did you get, but what has become easier, what is still costing marks, and what will change next term because of it. Those three questions, asked termly, are the whole of Year 11 strategy. Asked for the first time in Year 12, they arrive a year late.

There is a version of Year 11 that is too serious, and it should be named as well. A student who treats every preliminary task as an ATAR event, who studies past midnight in Term 2 of Year 11, who has no rest day, is spending stamina the following year will need. The rhythm is built at ordinary intensity, and the marks are read as information, not as a verdict. The test of a good Year 11 is not the report card; it is whether the student arrives in Term 4 with a system running, foundations secure, subjects confirmed, and energy to spare.

Edward MaDirector, MA99 Education