ATAR subject favouritism (1 Viewer)

[turbo2007]

I have an interesting posulate, just wondering what others think...

If you had two students of identical intelligence and work ethic whereby one student did business studies and the other did extension two maths - theoretically speaking they should end up with the EXACT same mark. But in reality, Business studies attracts people of lesser ability. This means that if a student gets 95+ will get scaled down pretty significantly (compared to math) even though these people ARE perfect in the sense that they probably only lost a few marks here and there due to 'petty' or 'silly' mistakes and deserve 100. These students have almost no margin for error in order to get a top mark and almost no room to improve there mark.
Now consider the extension 2 student; they can get away with a much lower mark and still get the same final mark - without the need for such pedantic measures.
The issue here that the HSC FAVOURS students who like certain subjects: the business studies student had to become inhumanly perfect and eliminate human error in order to match ext 2.
I mean, at the very least shouldnt BOS aim to make all the 2unit courses of roughly equal difficulty to void such pedantic inconsistencies in subject difficulties to make scaling less significant

My problem here isn't with the scaling system, its as fair as it gets. But the issue is that the hsc SHOULD offer extension courses for all of the most popular courses (chem,phys,eco,bio etc) to cater for the interests of students. why does a person interested in math get the advantage of doing FOUR UNITS (almost half there hsc) in a subject they are interested in and more likely to succeeded in while the business student only gets to do 2units to pursue his interests.

i dunno just wondering lol, what does everyone else think ?

 

[waryap]

yeah, I totally agree with you. However, business studies is quite a generalised subject, is it not? I'm pretty sure there isn't actually enough course content to be tought if there was 3u or even 4u business studies. For example, you basically learn basic human behaviours when it comes to getting a job or establishing a business, which is all quite general.

In the case of MX2 and maths as a whole there are so many formulaes and theories to learn, right? the course content of maths if it were to combine 2u,3u and 4u would be too substantial for an average student who was capable of doing only 2u maths. As a result, they split the course to suit the difficulty of the content, hence, 2u, 3u and 4u being established as separate courses.

This is just what I think =P

 

[ajdlinux]

Your subject title should be 'HSC', not 'ATAR'

In the Old HSC (pre-2001) they used to offer 3U courses in virtually everything, and also a lot of 4U courses. I'm not sure what justification they had for dropping most of those in the New HSC, but I suspect they would've said something about 'breadth of subjects' or similar. I'll see if I can find the report on it.

edit: Can't find the original report on it, it appears to be called 'Their future: options for reform of the Higher School Certificate' by Professor Barry McGaw. I did find this info in a BOS newsletter though (http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/archives/securing_their_future/framework.html#structure):

Professor McGaw's review of the Higher School Certificate revealed a number of concerns with the current curriculum structure. Significant problems are caused by the excessively differentiated array of Board-developed courses within some subjects. This results in a lowering of student expectations. There is evidence that too many capable students are studying less demanding courses. For example, between 1991 and 1996 the candidature in the two most demanding English courses declined by nearly 50 percent, and for the two most demanding Mathematics courses by over 30 percent. Similar downward trends have been recorded in recent years for the candidature of other 3 Unit subjects, such as Modern and Ancient History, Geography and Economics. Overall, there has been a decline since 1991 of some 35 percent in the number of students undertaking at least one 3 Unit or 4 Unit course (while total candidature of the two years is similar).

Moreover, Professor McGaw found that expectations, not only prior performance, determine whether the more demanding options are taken up. Capable students in the School Certificate from South West Sydney, for example, have been significantly less likely to undertake the more demanding English courses than those from Northern Sydney.

Excessive differentiation has also led to doubts about the quality of courses at the lower end of a series of courses within a subject. The curriculum demands made on students in the lower courses often fail to challenge those students to reach their potential.

To answer these concerns, Professor McGaw recommended a curriculum structure based on 2 Unit courses for Higher School Certificate subjects. Where justified in a particular subject, two courses - a 2 Unit standard and a 2 Unit advanced course, with overlapping content and assessment - could be provided to cater for a range of student abilities. Professor McGaw noted that in most subjects this overlap would be about onethird of the curriculum content. This would enable the higherlevel course to cover more advanced material, while the standard course would consolidate material on which the overlapping part would build.

The advanced and standard courses within a subject would be reported against a single performance scale for the subject. The single performance scale will be structured in such a way that successful students of the advanced course will be more likely to score the highest marks than students attempting the standard course. This will provide an incentive for capable students to undertake advanced studies.

The Government's primary purpose in revising the curriculum framework is to raise expectations by maximising the opportunity for students to study, and succeed in, more demanding courses. Rigour, subject integrity, relevance, and equity will be assured by application of the criteria for Higher School Certificate curriculum as outlined previously.

Students who undertake advanced studies will have their achievements recognised and rewarded. This will be achieved through the use of a single scale for assessing and reporting students' achievement across courses within a subject. Students' marks in different courses within the same subject will now be directly comparable, providing students doing the more demanding course with greater opportunities to receive higher marks.

So apparently this report recommended that the structure generally be changed to 2-unit courses, and noted issues with declining candidature in many 3U courses.