After years of sometimes varying degrees of consistent effort in studying and squeezing the most out of school learning that you can possibly do, Year 12 students have had a full dress rehearsal for the Queensland Core Skills Test, the second last in its twenty seven year history since 1992. It is an institution, and for Teachers, the test with hours of mind numbing boredom of plodding around Queensland’s school examination rooms whilst children puzzled, compiled, composed and sometimes scribbled and squirmed, is almost done. It is a demanding exam;  a set of four distinct tests which to my mind has done an outstanding job of helping to successfully rank academically our schools’ students at least in their ability to complete previously unseen tasks in a tight timeline. The QCS Test is presently the sole means by which subject student results are scaled or compared. The new ATAR system will adopt a totally different scaling procedure for ranking of student subject results – this will be the scaling system existing in NSW and Victoria that is as complicated as the present QCS Test scaling is in Queensland. The details of this complex scaling system can be read at: https://www.qtac.edu.au/atar-my-path/atar