What Do We Really Mean by Educational Attainment?

Abstract

What is our shared understanding of educational attainment? How does it relate to educational participation, educational completion, or achievement of qualifications or awards? How do we currently measure and acknowledge completion of year 12? What counts as completion for different stakeholders? What messages do our current suite of recognition artefacts (certificates, scores, qualifications) send about what is valued? How might we be excluding or disadvantaging some students? These questions are important in the Tasmanian context as we work through implementing the changes to the Education Act, and refresh the framework for accreditation and certification. However, it could be argued that considering these questions is vital in ensuring that stakeholders can work together in taking a student centric view of attainment. Clarification around these questions will also assist evaluators and researchers in devising and conducting meaningful measurement and benchmarking of educational attainment.