How your HSC works
- Image: Ivy Tseng, Penrith High School, (detail) ARTEXPRESS, HSC 2008
Step 8 – Judges apply the standards
In any annual exam there will be some minor variations in difficulty. This is true whether a class teacher or a university lecturer sets the questions. Also, from year to year there will be different students taking the exams – and of course, you all have different talents and abilities. Some years there might be slightly better performances in a course from the year before, in other years it might be the reverse. How do we know if those improved performances are because the exam questions were a little easier that year, or you students as a group performed better or worse?
Many education systems deal with this question by not showing much difference in achievement at all. They decide in advance how many students should receive 100 per cent, how many 99 per cent, and so on. Their students’ raw marks are then manipulated to match the pre-determined proportions against each number. They receive a certificate with a mark, but it is really an indication of rank, and it does not tell the community how much better or worse that group performed compared to previous years. It also cannot take into account any variation in the difficulty of the exams – the same proportion of students will receive 95/100 no matter how well they performed compared to previous years.
Since 2001 in NSW we have used an internationally recognised approach to show the NSW community exactly how well each HSC student performs against the same academic standards, regardless of these variations. This is called standards-referenced assessment.
A unique part of the standards approach is a special procedure called “judging”.
Judging means your raw exam marks can be matched to the standards and the reporting scale used by the Board of Studies. It means we can reward your performance with the mark it deserves, no matter how many other people performed at a similar, higher, or lower level.
Read the full description of judging and applying the standards.
In short:
- Teams of especially trained teachers (referred to as ‘judges’) follow a rigorous, multi-stage procedure to identify what raw examination mark each year they believe corresponds to the borderline between each of the standards (referred to as performance bands).
- Once a correspondence is established between particular raw marks and the cut-off points between bands at 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 on the performance scale, it is possible to align (transfer) all marks to the scale.
- A critical part of the procedure is to have judges use the ‘standards packages’ to develop a clear understanding of the knowledge, skills and understandings typically possessed by students who are at the borderlines between the performance bands for a course.
- The procedure involves the judges first working independently, and then working collaboratively, determining what marks they think students at each borderline would obtain for each question on this years examination. During the procedure the judges look at special statistical reports and samples of student responses to check and refine their initial decisions. At the end of the procedure the cut-off marks for each question for a borderline recorded by a judge are added up to produce that judge’s recommended cut-off mark. The average of the cut-off marks from all members of the team becomes the team’s recommended cut-off mark.
- During the procedure certain information is provided to the judges and other information that would prejudice the procedure is withheld. This information includes knowledge of the cut-off marks from previous years and certain statistical data that would indicate what proportion of students are likely to achieve each band.
- Once the judges have submitted their recommended cut-off marks the HSC Consultative Committee undertakes a thorough review of the work of each team and their application of the procedure. They consider any other factors that may have affected the marking procedures and determine the final cut-off marks that will be used this year. A simple mathematical technique is then used to align the raw examination marks to the reporting scale.
- The mark that is the borderline between Band 5 and Band 6 is adjusted to 90,
- the mark that is the borderline between Band 4 and Band 5 is adjusted to 80,
- the mark that is the borderline between Band 3 and Band 4 is adjusted to 70,
- the mark that is the borderline between Band 2 and Band 3 is adjusted to 60,
- the mark that is the borderline between Band 1 and Band 2 is adjusted to 50.
- A mark of 100 stays at 100 and a mark of 0 stays at 0.
Useful links
- HSC Standards packages illustrate the standards established in Higher School Certificate courses. They include descriptions of the performance bands and how they are set, certain key statistical reports, and samples of responses typically produced by students whose achievements place them on the borderline between two bands.
- Determining a Student’s Achievement in the HSC