QUEENSLAND will scrap the OP system in one of the biggest overhauls of the state's education system in decades.
But it will do it a year later than the Newman Government intended, with Labor Education Minister Kate Jones announcing the Year 11 class of 2018 will be among the first to phase through the new system, which will move Queensland away from its Overall Position score and Core Skills Test.
Instead, students will face some external exams and receive an Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) in line with students across the rest of the nation.
While OPs scored students between 1 and 25, the ATAR scores between 99.95 and zero - the higher the number, the better the result.
It was one of the recommendations of the Australian Council for Educational Research review into the state's education system, which was carried out under the previous government.
It too intended to transition to ATAR scores and away from OPs in its draft response to the review, with the move to begin in 2017.
Labor, having only come to power in early 2015, took some additional time to review the report's recommendations, with Ms Jones expected to announce the change on Tuesday during her estimates appearance.
Universities have increasingly turned to ATAR as a preferred score for course entrance as it is considered more precise.
Anywhere between a 99 and a 99.95 could be an equivalent to an OP1, despite spanning different scores.
The current system, which has been in place since 1992 when it replaced the Tertiary Entrance score which had dictated school leaver's tertiary choices since 1974, uses a Core Skills Test - seven hours of exams across several days, which tests a student's knowledge across a range of subjects and their curriculums, as well as a student's subject results across Year 11 and 12.
That will remain in place until the transition, when 2015's Year 8 students reach their senior years.
Those students will instead sit at least one external assessment as well as three internal assessments over the two years.
Ms Jones said that, while external assessment was important, it was not "the whole picture".
"We are at a point where change is necessary to ensure greater rigour and simplicity in both the senior assessment and tertiary entrance systems in Queensland," she said.
"We're now looking at how these changes will be implemented and in what form."
To that end the government will establish a ministerial taskforce to oversee the changes, which will be chaired by Ms Jones and stakeholders, such as the Queensland Curriculum Assessment Authority, teachers, parents and QTAC.
