Just to clarify, the mark which is scaled is a RAW hsc mark. This is an average of your school mark on the HSC report, and the raw mark you received in the HSC exam for that subject.
Sorry, I'm open to correct but I thought that when your raw mark is 'changed' to an external mark, the process is called moderation? Maybe I have the terms confused and use them synonymously.
Yeah, but the UAC doesn't use the moderated exam marks, they use the raw exam marks averaged with the school mark. It's called a raw exam mark. Ask Lazarus
I'm pretty sure the University Admissions Centre does not deal with HSC examinations. I think you're referred to the Board of Studies there. I'm also sure Lazarus is one of the most informed members of these boards, if he/she bothers to reply in this thread, then it'll be all cleared. I pose no further argument.
OK guys, here's the deal, in simple terms.
You might find it useful to follow along with
this flowchart or
this flowchart.
The initial process
Everyone starts off with an
internal school assessment mark or a
raw school assessment mark. That's the mark given to you by your school once you've completed all of your assessments. Your rank in your school according to this mark will also be shown on the Students Online website.
Next, everyone sits the HSC exams (or hands in their major work etc). The Board gives each student a
raw examination mark or a
total weighted mark based on their performance in the exam. This is the final raw mark for your examination component.
These raw examination marks are used to
moderate the raw school assessment marks. In a nutshell, the assessment marks for each school are moved up or down depending on how that school performed in the HSC exam. So, any differences between schools resulting from teachers marking leniently or harshly are removed. The marks assigned by the school just put students in a particular rank order and show the relative gaps between them. Once they're moderated against the exam marks, an
initial moderated assessment mark is produced for each student (sometimes just called the 'moderated assessment mark' for short).
Now, each student has a raw examination mark and an initial moderated assessment mark.
These marks follow two different paths.
UAC
For each student, the Technical Committee on Scaling averages the raw examination mark and the initial moderated assessment mark, producing a
raw HSC mark.
The raw HSC marks for every course are analysed by the scaling algorithm, which calculates a new
scaled mean and
scaled standard deviation for each course.
The raw HSC marks for each course are then
scaled so that the marks have the mean and SD determined by the scaling algorithm. This produces
scaled HSC marks.
Finally, the scaled HSC marks are aggregated and converted to your ATAR.
Board of Studies
The Board uses the raw band cut-offs determined by its markers to
align the raw examination marks and the initial moderated assessment marks to the course standards.
This produces an
aligned examination mark and an
aligned assessment mark.
(The Board refers to these marks as simply the 'examination mark' and 'assessment mark', but we use the word 'aligned' to distinguish them from the other types of marks.)
The aligned examination mark and aligned assessment mark are averaged to produce an
aligned HSC mark.
Finally, all three aligned marks are reported on your Record of Achievement.
