Running your ATAR Trajectories

The detailed steps

You save the ATAR Trajectories dashboard from your HSC dashboard once, then add your current students' assessment marks as often as you like. It shows what each student needs in each course to work toward their ATAR aspiration, and the path their marks so far suggest they're on. Your students' marks never leave your school.

Before you start

• Build your HSC dashboard first, as in Getting your HSC results into your dashboard. ATAR Trajectories use your school's own HSC results from it.
• Have your current cohort's assessment marks in Excel or CSV. One grade at a time: Year 12 or Year 11, not both together.
• ATAR aspirations are optional. If you collect them, have them ready too.
• Use Chrome or Edge, and open your files from your computer, not from OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams in your browser.

Step 1: Open ATAR Trajectories

Open your saved HSC dashboard. In the bar across the top, click ATAR Trajectories.

These screenshots come from Brindle Creek High School, a made-up school with made-up students. Yours looks the same, with your school's name and results.

If your file asks for an unlock code, type in the code I sent you and click Unlock. A new copy of your HSC dashboard, with ATAR Trajectories unlocked, is saved to your Downloads folder. Keep that copy and use it from now on.

Step 2: Save the ATAR Trajectories dashboard

Before you save, look under Students who sat HSC courses early. These are students in your latest HSC results with an ROA12 award: they sat an HSC course before their final year. Tick the ones still at your school, so the HSC results they already have count in their ATAR trajectories. Tick all and Untick all help when there are many. Your ticks are remembered.

If any of your students sit an HSC course two years early, also tick Also show the year before.

Only the ticked students' results go into the ATAR Trajectories file. Students who have since finished the HSC are left off the list.

Click Save the ATAR Trajectories dashboard.

It saves a new file to your Downloads folder, named for example Brindle Creek High School ATAR Trajectories 2026. Move it to wherever your school keeps student data, and share it only with the staff who talk with students about their ATARs.

This is a separate file on purpose. Your HSC dashboard holds past results. This one holds your current students' marks and aspirations.

Step 3: Get your marks ready

The simplest file is an Excel sheet with one row for each student in each course, and each student's overall assessment mark so far:

If you have ATAR aspirations, put them on a second sheet in the same file:

A few things make it work well:

• Every class in every course. Each estimate depends on where a student sits among everyone in that course, so a missing class changes everyone else's estimates.
• Course names as close and clear as you can make them. The dashboard reads most names and abbreviations, and you can fix any it gets wrong in Step 5.
• Names spelt the same on the marks sheet and the aspirations sheet, so they match up.
• Accelerated students studying an HSC course with this grade stay in. Courses they have already sat for the HSC come in from Step 2, so leave those out of this file.

Other layouts work too. A sheet with one row per student and a column for each course, or a markbook for each course, are both read automatically. Several files and sheets can go in together.

Step 4: Add your marks

Open your ATAR Trajectories file from your computer in Chrome or Edge. On the Your data tab, drop your marks file onto the box, or click choose files.

You can also copy the cells in Excel, including the heading row, and paste them under Or paste a range copied from Excel.

The dashboard lists each sheet it read and how it read it. Check these lines make sense.

Tick Keep this data on this computer if you want the marks still there the next time you open the file on this computer. Leave it unticked on a shared computer. Nothing is uploaded either way.

Step 5: Check what was found

Under What was found, check the number of students, courses and aspirations look right. Then read Worth checking, most important first:

• Needs an answer must be settled before those students or courses can be used.
• Check is worth a look. In the example above, English Extension 1 has fewer students than usual, which could mean a class is missing.

Next, look down Courses. The left column is the name in your file. The right is the course it was read as. Doubtful matches are shaded and listed first. If one is wrong, choose the right course in its dropdown. Your choices are remembered on this computer.

Under HSC courses already sat, the students you ticked in Step 2 are matched to names in your marks. Most match by name. A name spelt differently is shaded at the top, with the likely student suggested. Choose them in the dropdown. Students not found may simply be in another year group, so leave them as they are.

If a course already sat is also in this year's marks, it appears under Courses already sat and in this year's marks. Choose which mark counts:

• The HSC result, when the course was included by mistake. You don't need to include that course for the student next time.
• This year's mark, when the student is repeating the course. A repeated course's latest result is the one that counts toward the ATAR.

Until you choose, the course is left out of that student's trajectory.

A student who sat Mathematics Advanced early and now studies Mathematics Extension 2 won't see Mathematics Advanced at all, because it can't count alongside Extension 2.

If any of your students will start Mathematics Extension 2 later, tick them, so their Extension 1 counts as 2 units now, as it will then. Then click Go to the dashboard.

Step 6: Use the dashboard

The Dashboard tab opens on a student report. Choose a student from the list, or use Prev and Next.

In a conversation with a student, you can type a different ATAR aspiration into its box, or change an estimated HSC mark, and the report updates to show what that would do.

You can also add a subject or take one out, for example when a student changes subjects at the end of Year 11, or has a distance course whose marks you don't have. An added subject is estimated from how the student is achieving in their other subjects, and you can type your own estimate over it. A school mark you type in for an added subject is kept for the record only. Nothing is worked out from it.

Make this student's PDF report saves that one student's report to your Downloads folder. If you've changed anything, the report says amended, shades the rows that changed, and lists any subject taken out. These changes aren't saved: choosing another student starts again from the trajectory.

The other tabs along the top:

What does an ATAR need? needs no marks at all. Type an ATAR aspiration and it shows the HSC mark, and the band, each course needs for it. It works for any student at any time.

Step 7: Make the PDF reports

On the PDF reports tab, choose which reports you want:

• A report for each student, one page, for staff to use and students to take home.
• A report for each subject, for heads of faculty and teachers.

Some schools prefer students not to see their assessment marks or ranks on a report they take home. Untick those if you'd rather leave them off. The dashboard still shows both.

Click Choose a folder and make the reports. When the folder window opens, make a new folder inside your Downloads folder and choose it. Edge and Chrome won't save straight into Downloads itself, and folders synced to OneDrive can interrupt the saving. Your browser may ask once for permission to save there.

The reports go into a new folder there, named for your school and the date. Each report is a file of its own, and they also come all together in one file for printing.

When marks change

Run it again whenever you have new assessment marks. Open your ATAR Trajectories file, click Start again, and add the new marks file. Your course choices from Step 5 are remembered on that computer.

When your new HSC dashboard arrives from me after results day, save a new ATAR Trajectories file from it, as in Steps 1 and 2. That brings in the latest scaling and your school's newest HSC results. If your file asks for an unlock code, each year's copy has its own.

If something goes wrong

The dashboard tells you what it found. Anything marked Needs an answer must be settled before those students or courses can be used. The most common messages: