The Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre (QTAC) accidentally told 24,000 students that they were ineligible for an ATAR prompting a tonne of confusion from students and parents.
Students were meant to receive their scores on December 19, but instead an IT glitch on Friday (midnight) sent students an email that said that they were “ATAR ineligible.”
For anyone who has been through Year 12, you’ll know that a message like that could easily send you into a spiral. I’m pretty sure I cried when I got my ATAR (even though it was good) because I was so overwhelmed.
DEADASS THOUGHT I FAILED FOR A SC- TURNS OUT IT WAS JUST A GLITCH!!! BITCH I NEARLY CRIED BC I FOUND OUT THIS MORNING pic.twitter.com/JB9rwQXprL
— 🪩Disco Moon🪩 (@Anti_plague101) December 12, 2020
@QTACinfo erroneously sending all QLD year 12 students an email notifying them that they failed high school seems pretty on brand for 2020. #qtac #ATAR
— Paulette Beatrice (@LetteBeatrice) December 12, 2020
“Regretfully, testing of the release information rolled out into our live production space, which issued Atar notifications to 24,000 year 12 students,” chief executive of QTAC John Griffiths said in a statement.
“As there is no data currently in the system, students may have received a notification that they are Atar ineligible. QTAC acknowledges this technical error and deeply apologises to our year 12 cohort. This has no doubt caused additional anxiety during what has already been a trying year for our school community.
“We receive the Year 12 result file from the QCAA on Monday, which is when the actual calculation of the Queensland ATAR begins.
“We are on track for official release on Saturday 19 December.”
This is also the first year that Queensland has switched over to the ATAR system, which was previously an Overall Position (OP) score.
An ATAR is basically a number between 0.00 and 99.95 that indicates a students relative performance in relation to other students in their cohort.
Queensland Student Ella Gilmore told The Guardian that she freaked out when she first read the email.
“I got quite panicked when it first arrived,” Gilmore said.
“My school friends are all talking on group chat and they were all scared too.
“But we’ve figured out it is probably a mistake when we saw everyone in the state got the same email.”
If 2020 wasn’t already stressful enough for students, imagine then getting this email?
