Failings of the IB (1 Viewer)

[whatashotbyseve]

SOME students are opting for the International Baccalaureate instead of the Higher School Certificate to avoid having their marks in humanities subjects scaled down.

Greg Valentine, the representative for the International Baccalaureate in Australia, said all subjects in it were treated equally and graded out of seven.

"There is no scaling with any of the subjects. A seven is a seven whether you get it in English, maths or music. Intelligence in the performing arts is valued equally to the sciences in the IB."

Last year 306 students in NSW and 1700 across Australia completed the International Baccalaureate, whose candidature was growing by about 15 per cent a year, Mr Valentine said.

Harry Knight, 18, one of 38 students to complete the baccalaureate at SCECGS Redlands last year, received a mark of 44 out of 55, equivalent to a Universities Admissions Index of 99.9.

He chose the baccalaureate over the HSC in the belief that his mark for drama would have been scaled down in the HSC.

"Drama is as important as maths and English in the IB. I had friends who did drama for the HSC who were done over because of the scaling."

Harry, whose dream is to work with the Bell Shakespeare company, said he planned to study arts/law at the University of Sydney before reapplying for a place at the National Institute of Dramatic Art.

Antony Mayrhofer, director of the International Baccalaureate at St Paul's Grammar School, Penrith, said the baccalaureate did not discriminate against the arts. "We find students who are talented in the arts often avoid the HSC subjects because of a fear of being scaled down. If they are an average student in an arts subject their marks come down in the scaling process for the HSC, but that is not the case at all in the IB."

Mr Mayrhofer said close to half the students who studied visual arts received a grade 7.

About half of the 120 year 12 students at St Paul's completed the HSC, and the other half studied for the baccalaureate.

"A higher proportion of the IB students are doing arts than the HSC group at our school. Our school is the best performing school in western Sydney academically, but you wouldn't know it looking at the league tables, because they are purely based on HSC performers.

"We had 34 students who had a UAI above 91 last year who aren't on those tables."

Professor George Cooney, who has chaired the scaling committee that has responsibility for calculating the UAI, said the belief that humanities subjects were scaled down relative to science subjects was false. "It is untrue. It is an urban myth promulgated for 20 years, but it is no truer now than it was 20 years ago.

"The scaled mark you get depends on how good you are - your position in the course and the overall quality of the candidature.

"We have had students who do drama get a UAI of 100 in the past."

Source: SMH

And this is why the IB is flawed. I'm sorry, if you get 44/55 you are not smarter than 99.9% of the state. The whole degree just sounds pretentious to me. Discuss.

 

[AsyLum]

Professor George Cooney, who has chaired the scaling committee that has responsibility for calculating the UAI, said the belief that humanities subjects were scaled down relative to science subjects was false. "It is untrue. It is an urban myth promulgated for 20 years, but it is no truer now than it was 20 years ago.

"The scaled mark you get depends on how good you are - your position in the course and the overall quality of the candidature.

There's your article.

Must be a slow day on SMH.

 

[sirfeathers]

And this is why the IB is flawed. I'm sorry, if you get 44/55 you are not smarter than 99.9% of the state. The whole degree just sounds pretentious to me. Discuss.

forgive me if this is wrong, i don't do the IB, but i was pretty sure that it was out of 45, not 55? i think the article is a typo

but i'm getting really sick of all these misinformed conspiracies about the uac scaling down the arts yaddah yaddah. the way they scale the subjects is based on the strength of the candidature. there is no reason why drama might not be the highest scaling HSC subject next year, if that is how the candidature performs.

the other thing about the IB compared to the HSC is that the HSCX is way more flexible. for the IB you have to choose at least one subject from a band of subjects ie. a language, an "art" etc (which i actually think is a better idea than our system). because of this, IB students all tend to have a similar breadth to their studies, which could be why there's less need to devise a numerical algorithm to compare subjects ala the HSC.

but i'm sure that the IB people would account for this some other way, eg. by aligning standards across subjects(which would be totally subjective).

 

[Kikkoman]

I'm pretty sure it's outta 45; read it up on good ol' Wikipedia a few months ago
From another thing I can remember, to get into UNSW Undergraduate Medicine, you need like 34 minimum for IB... as opposed to 95 UAI. But then again, they're just minimums for the UAI/IB and don't take into account the UMAT and/or interview

 

[lionking1191]

lol yes it's out of 45.

and there you go, another person who has no clue how the scaling system works and felt wounded enough to get his story on paper..

 

[Joel8945]

What I don't get is that if English is compulsory, shouldn't its scaling remain static? It really hurts getting 42's and a 44 scaled and then this DISGUSTING 28 there and a 42 becoming a 4.2! I compromised my results in my sciences to do well in the English exam and it smacked me in the face! Love the scaling of sciences (For my sake). I know exactly what you guys mean about the arts subjects though. If you don't go to a school where all 40+ study scores are literally raked up, brilliant art minded people (apart from the occasional handful) are treated unfairly. I hate the VCE system. Also IB is out of 45 not 55 (A 44 out of 55 wouldn't give a 99.9).

 

[whatashotbyseve]

Ahk don't shoot the messenger lol! I just quoted verbatim from the SMH website. That's a pretty major on their part. 44/55 i thought was ridiculous but if its out of 45 then that is understandable.

 

[AsyLum]

Not sure about the VCE system, but if its anything like the NSW one, basically the scaling is there as an afterthought rather than having any direct effect upon your results.

Therefore, if you fuck up, that's you fucking up in that exam compared to everyone else, not a fault of the system.

http://www.uac.edu.au/pubs/pdf/tsc_report_2007_fin_web-sep.pdf