Archived material
Some aspects of the documents in this section no longer apply, however they have been archived for reference.
Newsletter No. 11 – 16 September 1998
The New South Wales Government Reforms for the School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate
Assessing and Reporting the New HSC
The new approach to assessment and reporting will be refined over several years. Analysis of student achievement in successive HSC examinations will be used to build a performance scale of student achievement in each course. The scale will be used to describe what a student knows and can do.
For most subjects, HSC syllabuses and examinations will be similar to now. Except in cases where trialling shows that significant changes are needed, changes to the form of examinations will occur gradually between 2001 and 2003.
The performance descriptors and bands used in 2001 will be reviewed in subsequent years, as Professor McGaw envisaged. The 2001 and 2002 examinations will provide feedback to support implementation of the new syllabuses and to enhance the performance scales.
Introduction of standards-referenced procedures to school-based assessment will also be gradual. Procedures used by schools in 2001 to report school-based assessment to the Board will be similar to those that apply for 1999 and 2000, with schools submitting numerical assessments only. The difference will be that over the period, teachers' marking practices will be increasingly informed by reference to the standards-based approach. Training and development will be designed to support this.
Description of standards expected in the HSC
program
The revision of syllabuses into single 2 Unit courses provides
the opportunity to describe more clearly the standards students
are expected to achieve in HSC courses.
A syllabus package for each course will be provided to schools by
July 1999. It will include the syllabus, examination specifications,
a specimen examination paper, a sample marking scheme and a performance
scale. Each element of the syllabus package will contribute to an
understanding of what is to be achieved by students studying the
course. The performance scale will play a key role in the description
of standards, but it alone will not represent the standards; it
will be used to report achievements of students at the end of the
HSC course. Work on the performance scale for each course is well
under way.
Range and balance in school-based assessment
practices
School-based assessment and external examinations should reflect the intentions of the syllabuses. The recent evaluation of HSC assessment practices found that school-based assessment often mimics the examination and does not always address the full range of syllabus outcomes. While school-based assessment will have similar characteristics to external assessment, it should emphasise tasks not readily covered by external examination.
Examinations in the new course structures
Over the coming months, the Board will consider a number of examination
models that can engage and challenge all students and enable them
to demonstrate the standard they have achieved. During 1998, questions
that cater for all students (designed to identify the full range
of achievement) are being developed and trialled extensively. Following
this process, the examination model identified as most appropriate
for each subject will be used to develop examination specifications
and specimen papers. These will be distributed to schools by July
1999 as part of the syllabus packages.
In many subjects, a single examination paper will be constructed
that can identify differing levels of student achievement. These
papers will employ a variety of question types designed to span
the range of abilities in the subject. In some subjects, differentiating
between levels of achievement may require additional advanced sections
within an examination paper. In a few subjects there may be the
need for separate examination papers with an overlapping common
section. A trial of question types and models in a sample of schools
and across subjects will inform decisions about the most appropriate
approach for each subject.
Examinations will provide:
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a thorough assessment of key syllabus content and outcomes;
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questions that focus on finding out what students know and are able to do;
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a variety of question types to measure knowledge and skills;
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access for all students to the range of questions through short-answer items and structured questions that guide student answers;
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opportunities for sophisticated and original answers through open-ended, essay-style questions and problem-solving questions;
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where appropriate, projects, practical and performance tasks.
Moving to descriptive reporting
The HSC White Paper proposed that reporting of student achievement in the Higher School Certificate be more accurate, meaningful and comprehensive. The new form of HSC reporting will describe the standards achieved by students. Information about how many students in the cohort have achieved a particular standard will also be provided. Students will be awarded the marks that they earn (in contrast to scaled marks) and these will be reported against clear standards.
The new HSC reports will show the HSC mark, ranging from 0 to 100 in each subject. Each student's achievements in a course will place his or her performance into one of six bands. A descriptor associated with each band will summarise the attainments typically demonstrated by students. The reports will also show graphically the statewide distribution of all students' achievements in each subject.
A mark of 50 out of 100 on the performance scale will correspond to the minimum standard expected as determined by the examiners in each subject. Students will receive the marks they earn. There will be no predetermined spread of marks. A mark of 50 will separate band 1 and band 2 descriptor statements. Marks of 60, 70, 80, and 90 will similarly separate bands 3, 4, 5, and 6 respectively. A student's achievement mapped against agreed known standards will determine the mark each student receives. This is a change from the current norm-referenced approach of scaling marks to a predetermined distribution and then reporting each student's marks in a manner that does little more than show their ranking in the group.
This year the Board has had teams of teachers and academics with HSC examining and marking experience undertake extensive and detailed evaluations of student achievements in most courses. Using the 1996 and 1997 HSC examination questions and answers, they have developed descriptions of what students have been able to demonstrate in the final examination. To do this, they looked at two aspects of student performance in the 1996 and 1997 HSC examinations. These were:
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the tasks in the examination, and what they set out to assess
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how students performed in response to those tasks.
Examination committee members and senior markers mapped the exam tasks for each year to each syllabus, described expectations of typical achievements and described actual student performance. Experienced teachers made judgements about cut-off marks for bands and used actual scripts as the basis for writing descriptions of standards of performance.
As McGaw proposed, the process of refinement of these descriptors will be ongoing. The performance descriptors will be applied to the new syllabuses, to the examination specifications and also to the specimen examination questions. They will be further refined following each HSC examination and again in 2001 and 2002, based on the revised syllabuses.
Progress in the next few months
Performance descriptors will be further refined through workshops and focus groups and consultation with education groups.
Trial examination questions will be developed and tested in a number of schools.
School-based assessment requirements will be developed for consultation.
The syllabus revision and the development of assessment advice and performance scales will be closely related, with each activity dependent on the other. When draft syllabus packages are released for consultation, draft performance scales and sample examination questions will accompany them.
Professor Gordon Stanley
President, Board of Studies NSW
16 September 1998