Q: If Advanced and Standard English are scaled as a single group, why does an aligned mark of 38.5 in Standard English become a scaled mark of 38.5 while an aligned mark of 38.6 in Advanced English become a scaled mark of 32.8?
A: English was scaled as a single group but Standard and Advanced were separated for purposes of reporting. Neither Advanced nor Standard students were advantaged or disadvantaged as a result of scaling. The apparent anomaly results from the fact that:
- the common scale for Standard and Advanced marks determined on the basis of raw marks differed from the common scale determined on the basis of the Board's
aligned marks
- the UAI is based on raw HSC marks rather than the Board's HSC marks that are reported to students.
In summary:
1. Raw Standard and Advanced examination marks were placed on a common scale by statistical equating using the common 2 unit paper that all English students completed. School assessments were moderated using these raw examination marks. A raw HSC mark was then calculated as the sum of the examination mark and moderated school assessment.
2. After scaling, a raw HSC mark yielded the same scaled mark, whether from a Standard or Advanced student.
3. The Board used judges to align the Standard and Advanced examination marks against the standards defined by the Performance Band Descriptors in English.
4. The common scale so determined for the Board's HSC marks was slightly different from that established by statistical equating: the same raw HSC mark corresponded to different Board HSC marks for Standard and Advanced students, with Advanced students receiving the higher mark.
5. Consequently, while the same raw HSC mark yielded the same scaled mark, the same was not true for the Board's HSC marks.
While Standard and Advanced marks were combined for scaling they were separated for the purposes of reporting. As neither schools nor students have knowledge of the raw marks, scaled marks had to be related to the Board's HSC marks reported to students. This led to the misapprehension that Advanced students were disadvantaged in some way by the scaling process - this was not so. Advanced students received due acknowledgment for their achievement both in relation to the UAI and the reported HSC mark.
In 2001 there was less overlap between Standard and Advanced students than between 2 unit General and 2 unit Related in the past: over half of the Advanced students performed better than the top 10% of the Standard students. The data from 2001 suggest that the Advanced candidature comprises the previous 2 unit Related students and the top 40% or so of the 2 unit General students, leaving the bottom 60% of the 2 unit General candidature and the Contemporary students enrolled in Standard.
The lack of Standard students in performance band 6 and the small proportion of Standard students in performance band 5 were entirely consistent with the performance of Standard students on the common paper. Few Standard students received high marks on the common paper and, as markers were unaware of which scripts were from Standard students and which were from Advanced students, there was no bias in the marking of this paper that favoured Advanced students.
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