The Northern Territory is combined with South Australia and then both are treated as a single entity.
A particular ATAR attained by students from different states doesn't mean that the students are equally smart or have mastered the same content - it just means that, for tertiary admission purposes, the students can be treated as likely to perform at about the same level at university.
It means that your ATAR ranks you against the students with whom you completed Year 7 rather than the (smaller) group who went on to complete Year 10 -- that was the purpose of the UAI -- or the (even smaller) group who went on to complete Year 12 -- that was the purpose of the very old TER.
It's meant to be an 'age cohort' rank - i.e. comparison with everyone your age in the state whether they stayed at school or not.
bad lck for them. on the other hand, I feel it's quite a negative system - rounding down instead of up, makes all the difference in the world. This legislation seems quite unnecessary to me, but in the other states that have a very different alternative to the UAI: will they find it very different? And I have my doubts on the long term impacts - they say it won't really affect our marks, but we won't know until we do the thing will we? Just going to stck to what I know: try my best, no way to get around a rule every single person in the state has to conform to too.