Please help explain... (1 Viewer)

[A1P]

Got my WACE results a few days ago, happy with my ATAR but this kinda bugs me.
Hope someone can help explain.

For Math Specialist 3C/3D (equiv to NSW 3U/4U) :
School mark 90 - Exam mark 92 - Combined into WACE big fat mark of... 84.1 !!

Does that mean my school cohort helped drag my 90 school mark down to ~76 ?
Thanks

 

[snowflakeptical]

Got my WACE results a few days ago, happy with my ATAR but this kinda bugs me.
Hope someone can help explain.

For Math Specialist 3C/3D (equiv to NSW 3U/4U) :
School mark 90 - Exam mark 92 - Combined into WACE big fat mark of... 84.1 !!

Does that mean my school cohort helped drag my 90 school mark down to ~76 ?
Thanks

When you say school mark, so you mean the mark BOSTES stated or the mark your in-school assessments gave?
Not sure how WA calculates the marks but in NSW we get an average of our assessment mark (BOSTES calculates based on what our school sent in) and a exam mark (this is based on our performance in the exam and aligning done by BOSTES) to then get the HSC mark

So either that 90 school mark is not done by BOSTES or that this year your state performed really well in Math Specialist 3C/3D so BOSTES adjusted your mark

 

[A1P]

The 90 was my in-school assessment mark and the school submitted to WACE.

It's printed on BOTH my school certificate and the WACE certificate.

The WACE certificate shows : School mark 90 -- Exam mark 92 -- WACE course mark 84.1

I understand the WACE course mark is average of School & Exam, thus I suspect my school mark was pulled down to 76.2 by my cohort !!

 

[snowflakeptical]

The 90 was my in-school assessment mark and the school submitted to WACE.

It's printed on BOTH my school certificate and the WACE certificate.

The WACE certificate shows : School mark 90 -- Exam mark 92 -- WACE course mark 84.1

I understand the WACE course mark is average of School & Exam, thus I suspect my school mark was pulled down to 76.2 by my cohort !!

oh wow. I understand the difference between our states regarding school marks. Our one the school submits our overall school mark but after exams are done, BOSTES adjusts the marks so like if my marks were pulled down/ pulled up, that mark would be the official one, so when we take the average it makes sense.

It's weird actually how your school mark for WACE isn't what BOSTES adjusted because that's really confusing

How was your in-school ranking because that could be what made your school mark significantly different

 

[brent012]

It's weird actually how your school mark for WACE isn't what BOSTES adjusted because that's really confusing

How was your in-school ranking because that could be what made your school mark significantly different

BOSTES is NSW only, every state has their own board and system. There are likely similarities between the different systems, but it wouldn't work exactly the same as the HSC.

 

[snowflakeptical]

BOSTES is NSW only, every state has their own board and system. There are likely similarities between the different systems, but it wouldn't work exactly the same as the HSC.

oh yeah just atar is similar among us

 

[A1P]

How was your in-school ranking because that could be what made your school mark significantly different

I was in the top three among the ~70 cohort (knew that as I was contender for the school's subject prize, but just missed out).
My school is quite strong in Maths as our teams either win or come 2nd in state math competitions a few years in a row.

 

[A1P]

BOSTES is NSW only, every state has their own board and system. There are likely similarities between the different systems, but it wouldn't work exactly the same as the HSC.

Thanks, I agree however the overall methods must be very similar for ATAR to be accepted as comparable Aus-wide.

 

[snowflakeptical]

I was in the top three among the ~70 cohort (knew that as I was contender for the school's subject prize, but just missed out).
My school is quite strong in Maths as our teams either win or come 2nd in state math competitions a few years in a row.

Wow nice!!
I reckon your state performed well in the maths exam this year so that affected your school (most likely)

 

[brent012]

oh yeah just atar is similar among us

Thanks, I agree however the overall methods must be very similar for ATAR to be accepted as comparable Aus-wide.

Yep, a few years ago there were a bunch of different rankings system across the different states. But the ATAR is just a rank, it doesn't necessarily mean the different systems that result in those ranks have to be similar.

 

[InteGrand]

The 90 was my in-school assessment mark and the school submitted to WACE.

It's printed on BOTH my school certificate and the WACE certificate.

The WACE certificate shows : School mark 90 -- Exam mark 92 -- WACE course mark 84.1

I understand the WACE course mark is average of School & Exam, thus I suspect my school mark was pulled down to 76.2 by my cohort !!

I don't know how the WACE system works, but if the important "School mark" is not 90 (i.e. is 76.2 or something), why are they showing the 90 as your school mark on the certificate? It's like how in the HSC, they show you your relevant mark for the school mark (called Assessment Mark in HSC), which is the mark obtained after the process of moderation. Why wouldn't they do something like that in WACE?

 

[A1P]

but if the important "School mark" is not 90 (i.e. is 76.2 or something), why are they showing the 90 as your school mark on the certificate?

I guess WACE has chosen to show the School mark as is. If they had shown the suspected 76.2 it would be described as Moderated school mark or something like that, but they choose not to.

No worries with that, my curiosity is more on the moderation process. My 92 for exam should show to WACE that my 90 for school wasn't from my school being overgenerous at all. Yet WACE's moderation process, whatever method it uses, saw fit to bring it down to 76.2

Down a few percents no problem, but a whopping -14% ??

 

[A1P]

Here's a screenshot of it
http://s10.postimg.org/pwj6sfh21/WACE.jpg

 

[InteGrand]

I guess WACE has chosen to show the School mark as is. If they had shown the suspected 76.2 it would be described as Moderated school mark or something like that, but they choose not to.

No worries with that, my curiosity is more on the moderation process. My 92 for exam should show to WACE that my 90 for school wasn't from my school being overgenerous at all. Yet WACE's moderation process, whatever method it uses, saw fit to bring it down to 76.2

Down a few percents no problem, but a whopping -14% ??

Does WA's version of BOSTES have any information about how moderation is done? For NSW HSC, BOSTES has information about this on their website.

 

[Lalaloop]

Maybe it's a typo?

 

[A1P]

Does WA's version of BOSTES have any information about how moderation is done?

SCSA is WA's equiv of BOSTES

http://www.scsa.wa.edu.au/internet/... of how WACE course scores calculated pdf.pdf

 

[InteGrand]

SCSA is WA's equiv of BOSTES

http://www.scsa.wa.edu.au/internet/... of how WACE course scores calculated pdf.pdf

Well reading that document, we see that the "Course Score" is not simply the average of the school and examination marks. The average of the (standardised) examination mark and (standardised moderated) school mark is actually termed the "Combined Mark". (As that document says, they standardise your examination marks and moderate and standardise your school mark, like how BOSTES does aligning and moderation if you've heard of that. More details are in this link, which is from that PDF you linked: www.scsa.wa.edu.au/internet/Senior_Secondary/WACE_Examinations/Your_Marks. )

Now, once your Combined Mark is calculated, this gets converted finally into a Course Score, which is what you saw reported. Read the section "Calculating the WACE course score" on page 2 of the PDF you linked. Note that they say there "A student’s WACE course score is likely to differ from the student’s school, examination and combined marks for a course/stage."

So in summary, your examination mark and school mark actually undergo a lot of "scaling" before your Course Score is arrived at, so it's not surprising that the Course Score is very different from the school and examination marks.