ACT College system under attack.

Well, I’d never had the experience where ‘If you get a bad UAI, you won’t become anything’ because I did my Year 12 through CIT. Most of the people who came through the program had screwed up their packages or just didnt get high enough.

The attitude of ‘If I don’t score well – I won’t become anything’ sort of came from within for myself seeing as though I want to become a primary teacher and I NEED to go to uni for that.

As long as the support is good for the students and they are being informed… that’s all you can really hope for.

exactly thats the point, there are other ways, yet they seem to concentrate on the UAI as being the main

I don’t remember anybody at my educational institution claiming that if you don’t get a good UAI you won’t succeed in life (then again, I was publically educated, so not all the students were going to get a good UAI anyway). And besides, there are other ways of gaining alternative admittance to university for the higher-admittance career paths anyway, they just take a little longer and require you to prove that you can handle the workload.

Your dead right about the AST, as someone that sat it last year.

The mark you recieve in the AST doesn’t directly influence your UAI, it is influenced by how the school goes as a whole. Which is why some students are discouraged from sitting the test.

Though last I heard was that the BSSS (Board of Senior Secondary Studies) was going to change it so that your AST mark directly affects your UAI.

Most teachers were well aware of how the system worked and worked hard to make sure that this knowledge was used to your (the students)advantage.

Mind you it is an incredibly confusing process to determine the UAI, one im sure that they could make a whole lot simplier.

and schmerica I can only agree that they put way to much emphasis on a single test, yet they also try and con you into believing that if you don’t get an adequate UAI then you can’t succeed in life!

The whole AST thing is stupid. If you screw up the AST tests, but perform excellent over the 2 years, your mark will still suffer greatly.

I did my year 12 last year through CIT and we had a few teachers who researched the way the AST works and learned the system in and out. It was really great to have that there, so if we had any questions, they could answer them.

We needed to perform well as a group rather than individuals, and the higher we scored as a group determined what our scores were. So, basicly, if you were a smart kid in a dumbass school… your pretty much stuffed…
But if your a dumbass in a smart school/year group… you might just be in luck.

The thing that annoyed most people was the the way the AST is weighed. Too much emphasis is placed on a single test.

To quote the wife, education needs to produce Independant Learner-Thinkers. The influences therein is the clincher.

Ah, but are they learning how to work the system or are the schools just pushing them towards working the system. It’s fairly common knowledge that the majority of private schools cull the students that will bring down their final year results and where there are set tests will devote much of the year to test passing rather than learning.

I’d say media literacy is also an essential skill these days.

Well it teaches them to work the system… and does use some skills that may have been learned

My 2C is the role of school is to equip students with the tools to comprehend the world around them.

That means maths, economics, history, english, and science.

It also means teaching them how society works, no question.

My point is that figuring out how to get a good UAI in the ACT system serves valid educational purposes in its own right.

A bit like a final exam.

I guess that’s the question JB – is the education system geared towards turning out good workers, or good citizens and human beings?. (Not to say they’re mutually exclusive but you know what I mean)

Are we part of a society or just an economy?