Internal Assessments (2 Viewers)

[hscc]

Is internal assessments all about your ranking within the school? Or does the mark also count? Because I had an economics exam recently, worth 10% and I might have gotten as low as 80% or maybe less. But if I rank well, is this good? Or will the low mark also have an impact?

 

[Bestintheworld]

The marks you get doesn't matter whatsoever. It's the rank that matters although the marks you get kind of indicate where you will end up in the HSC.

 

[helloimyellow]

Rankings are most important, but I think the board also takes into account relative gaps between rankings (if you were only 1 or 2 marks off, or 20 marks off the person in front of you).

 

[BandSixFix]

It's the rank. Because every exam has relative difficulty.

 

[D94]

The marks most certainly matter. Schools submit your mark to BOSTES, not your rank.

The mark reflects your performance within your school. It will then be adjusted based on a control assessment, i.e. the HSC exams.

Get as many marks as possible in school as BOSTES looks at how close/far you are from each other student.

 

[Flop21]

Rank.

Obviously your mark affects your internal rank though...

But BOS chuck your mark out the window once they determine your rank within your class.

 

[Nailgun]

Rank.

Obviously your mark affects your internal rank though...

But BOS chuck your mark out the window once they determine your rank within your class.

While I think this is true for the most part, the relative gap between ranks is still taken into account.

 

[Flop21]

While I think this is true for the most part, the relative gap between ranks is still taken into account.

How so?

I was under the impression the internal mark is directly linked to class external performance + your internal rank.

 

[Nailgun]

From BOS document on

Moderation of Assessment Marks
All assessments submitted by schools are scaled by the Office of the Board of Studies in
a process called moderation. The reason for doing this is so that direct comparisons can
be made between assessment marks awarded by different schools. Schools have students
of differing quality, as well as different standards in their marking and in the difficulty of
tasks and tests they set, so it is necessary to adjust all the school assessment marks in
each course to a common scale.
After the examination marks have been scaled, the assessment marks for each course in
each school are moderated according to the examination performance of the group of
students in the school. The moderation process adjusts the assessments submitted by the
school so that the mean (or average) of the group’s assessments is set to equal the mean
of the examination marks obtained by the students in that group, and so that the top
assessment mark is equal to the highest examination mark obtained by a student in the
group. The moderation process maintains the rank order of students within their school
group. It is important that the marks submitted by schools show not only the rank order of
their students, but also the relative differences between them as these are reflected in the
moderated assessment marks.

 

[Nailgun]

How so?

I was under the impression the internal mark is directly linked to class external performance + your internal rank.

Yeah this is completely true, and for the most part I think is like 80+% of it
It's just that the relative gaps do have an effect (but internal rank order is still maintained so its not that big of a difference)

 

[Flop21]

From BOS document on

But wouldn't providing the ranks + marks also show the distance between each??

 

[Nailgun]

As in internal ranks and external marks?

It would theoretically, but I think generally BOS aims to reward people who have been working hard all year versus someone who does well in a single external exam, and in that sense they tend to favor internals over externals.
They take all four (internal ranks, internal marks, external ranks, external marks) into account

EDIT: I don't think they take relative differences in external marks into account though

 

[BandSixFix]

The marks most certainly matter. Schools submit your mark to BOSTES, not your rank.

The mark reflects your performance within your school. It will then be adjusted based on a control assessment, i.e. the HSC exams.

Get as many marks as possible in school as BOSTES looks at how close/far you are from each other student.

What really? I swear they only sent ranks to your school + the differences. Do you have any source on this? curious.

 

[Flop21]

As in internal ranks and external marks?

It would theoretically, but I think generally BOS aims to reward people who have been working hard all year versus someone who does well in a single external exam, and in that sense they tend to favor internals over externals.
They take all four (internal ranks, internal marks, external ranks, external marks) into account

EDIT: I don't think they take relative differences in external marks into account though

I'm just talking about internals here. Sorry I'm not really understanding what you're saying.

I thought it was simply calculated by your class's external mark (which gets put into your internal mark). E.g. I came first in some subjects, and got the first external mark as my internal mark. Etc. for other ranks.

 

[D94]

I'm just talking about internals here. Sorry I'm not really understanding what you're saying.

I thought it was simply calculated by your class's external mark (which gets put into your internal mark). E.g. I came first in some subjects, and got the first external mark as my internal mark. Etc. for other ranks.

Nah that doesn't happen - except for first and last. For the other ranks, what matters is how close/far you were from each other in school. So being 1% away from first will get you a better mark than being 10% away from first, even if you were the same rank in the 2 scenarios.

 

[Flop21]

Nah that doesn't happen - except for first and last. For the other ranks, what matters is how close/far you were from each other in school. So being 1% away from first will get you a better mark than being 10% away from first, even if you were the same rank in the 2 scenarios.

Wow interesting. The whole thing seems very fair.

 

[Nailgun]

Nah that doesn't happen - except for first and last. For the other ranks, what matters is how close/far you were from each other in school. So being 1% away from first will get you a better mark than being 10% away from first, even if you were the same rank in the 2 scenarios.

Even then, they still maintain the rank order and so theoretically the difference in marks would be small
Depends on the situation obviously

My understanding is they use a formula to moderate the marks while maintaining the first external mark to the first internally ranked person, the last external mark to the last internally ranked person, and making sure the mean of the internal and external scores will be the same

One of my teachers stresses that the formula takes into account the standard deviation, and hence having a lower standard deviation (everyone close together) will have the effect of moderating everyone slightly higher.

That being said, I still think that internal rank pretty much decides most of it, and the other factors may add or contribute 1 or 2 marks either way at most.

 

[D94]

That being said, I still think that internal rank pretty much decides most of it, and the other factors may add or contribute 1 or 2 marks either way at most.

It's not a point of conjecture, as you seem to think. It has been well explained by the Board of Studies and as well as Dr Robert MacCann (the person who devised the moderation process).

MacCann, R.G. (1996). The Moderation of Higher School Certificate Assessments using a Quadratic Polynomial Transformation: a Technical Paper, Sydney: NSW Board of Studies.

http://community.boredofstudies.org...on-technical-paper-1995-board-studies-nsw.pdf

Rank simply does not determine your mark. How much you differ between each student is taken into account when your marks are adjusted because the quadratic formula used to moderate your marks directly feeds in your raw assessment mark, not your rank.

 

[Nailgun]

It's not a point of conjecture, as you seem to think. It has been well explained by the Board of Studies and as well as Dr Robert MacCann (the person who devised the moderation process).



http://community.boredofstudies.org...on-technical-paper-1995-board-studies-nsw.pdf

Rank simply does not determine your mark. How much you differ between each student is taken into account when your marks are adjusted because the quadratic formula used to moderate your marks directly feeds in your raw assessment mark, not your rank.

I think you misunderstood me. I was merely saying that since rank order must be maintained, all other factors will likely have a limited effect dependent on the cohort, and in practice it would not vary much?

Thank you for the link btw, I had assumed that the formula was not given out, so it makes an interesting read.

 

[D94]

I think you misunderstood me. I was merely saying that since rank order must be maintained, all other factors will likely have a limited effect dependent on the cohort, and in practice it would not vary much?

Thank you for the link btw, I had assumed that the formula was not given out, so it makes an interesting read.

I don't think anyone said otherwise.

These factors do affect the quadratic equation. As to whether it's limited or not, I don't think something like that can be simply quantified. They generate the unique quadratic equation for that school.