When me and my friends started Year 12, we all compared our goals and expected study scores "I'll get 30 in this, 25 in this, 40 in this, etc.". I kind of don't like the whole ATAR system of ranking, especially because I was told from Prep-Year 10, "school is not a competition, it's not about who has the highest grade". Then on the first day of Year 11 and 12, the school says that we'll be competing against 100,000 other people across the state. Good luck.
Senior Secondary school should have more of a personal development approach to it, comparing scores from Year 9, 10 and 11, or something like that. Rural students are also disadvantaged from a ranking system, which favours those who actively have the resources and teachers for their classes. Most excursions I did in Year 11 and 12 involved a 2.5 hour bus trip into Melbourne, one of them returned home around 2:30AM, and we still had school the next day. Students from Mildura or Orbost would need to travel even further, potentially taking a day out of their studies
I'm sure the competitive ranking system works well for most, but since finishing Year 12, I realised it wasn't for me, and it might not suit some people, based on their study preferences
