HSC marks, maximum and minimum (1 Viewer)

[underthesun]

How do I know what was the highest mark in specific course last year?

I'm just curious what was the highest possible HSC mark to obtain last year for english standard and comparably english advanced. But I only get to know that no-one got band 6 in english standard last year.

The BOS site only supplies the band percentiles, so there's not much to see..

 

[pigs_can_fly]

not necessarily, the board caps the max mark for some courses at for eg. 98 or something. dunno why. ask laz

 

[Frigid]

Yeah, getting band 6 in Standard English is nothing special.

 

[Ragerunner]

they say its impossible to get band6 in standard

and only less than 1% get band 5

 

[pigs_can_fly]

but is it impossible because of the presumably poor quality of the candidature, or for some reason you can't?

 

[underthesun]

I hope it's the "poor quality" of the candidature, so I won't have to punch my head teacher for not letting me move up.

 

[Constip8edSkunk]

i remember hearing something like its capped so as to make a fairer system ie, sum guy getting band 6 in standard is not comparable wif a band 6 in advanced... and that if u r good enuf to get band 6 in standard u prolly shouldnt b doing standard neway... same with general maths...

could b wrong but

 

[Minai]

Originally posted by Constip8edSkunk
i remember hearing something like its capped so as to make a fairer system ie, sum guy getting band 6 in standard is not comparable wif a band 6 in advanced... and that if u r good enuf to get band 6 in standard u prolly shouldnt b doing standard neway... same with general maths...

no...
the new HSC is completely standards based
there is no "capping" of marks.
It just so happens that noone in the entire 33,000+ canditure of English Standard has never, in 2001 or 2002, achiveed a quality of work that could be deemed a band6 performance

incidently, I heard the highest mark in English Standard last yr was either 88 or 89, so this yr we might see a band 6, either if canditure quality improves, or the Board relaxes their marking schemes for english

 

[McLake]

It has been said (by bored officals) that the reason Standard English students don't reach band 6 is because there are no objectives in there course that allow them to reach a band 6 answer ...

 

[Lazarus]

The UAC releases tables of statistics every year, which include the highest mark obtained in each course. You can find the 2002 table here.

As Cyph said, the highest possible aligned mark is always 100%.

Originally said by pigs_can_fly
not necessarily, the board caps the max mark for some courses at for eg. 98 or something. dunno why. ask laz

As Minai said, the aligned HSC marks distributed by the Board are not capped in any way. However, scaled marks are capped during the scaling process. The effect is only very minor, and is described in detail in the 2002 Scaling Report. It is done in order to dissuade 'dumbing down'.

Regarding B6 in Standard - there haven't been any 'official' statements (naturally), but rumour has it that the examination is set in such a way that makes it extremely difficult for the students to demonstrate a performance at a B6 level. It's not impossible, however.

 

[deyveed]

So do you think that if the person who came first for English Advanced or English Extension 2 did English Standard will get a band 6 (assuming the person put the same amount of effort and skill) because their work is soooo good that it deserves it?

 

[pri]

Originally posted by deyveed
So do you think that if the person who came first for English Advanced or English Extension 2 did English Standard will get a band 6 (assuming the person put the same amount of effort and skill) because their work is soooo good that it deserves it?

somebody is bitter!

 

[Newbie]

do advance students automatically beat the standard ones?

 

[Lazarus]

Originally posted by Newbie
do advance students automatically beat the standard ones?

In terms of HSC marks... yes... in terms of scaled marks... no.

 

[underthesun]

Hey laz, i was using your old lazseeker, and it seems that a HSC mark of 87 in standard and 87 in advanced gets scaled to "scaled mark" of 94 and 86 respectively (standard seems to have better scaling). Is that true? If it is, I want to kiss my teacher now..

btw it's the old version that says Professor Cooney's Lazseeker
its a bit old..

 

[Newbie]

bug?

or maybe just that 86 in advance isnt too hot while 87 in standard is pretty good

 

[underthesun]

87 in english standard is top 0.03%, while in english advanced is only top 8.9%..

Man.. it must be hard as hell to get 87 in standard paper!
*goes to bookstores and looks for past standard eng papers*

 

[Lazarus]

Originally posted by underthesun
it seems that a HSC mark of 87 in standard and 87 in advanced gets scaled to "scaled mark" of 94 and 86 respectively (standard seems to have better scaling). Is that true?

Yes and no.

It is true that, in 2001, an HSC mark of 87 was equivalent to a scaled mark of 94 in Advanced and 86 in Standard. However, it is not true that an HSC mark of 87 was scaled to a mark of 94 in Advanced and 86 in Standard. You cannot compare aligned marks to scaled marks - they are only equivalencies. Whether the corresponding scaled mark is higher or lower says nothing about how the course was scaled, because it is the raw marks that are scaled, and not the aligned ones. Every course is aligned in a different way.

Whilst the Standard and Advanced courses are aligned in different ways, they are, in reality, scaled in the same way. They're not even scaled separately - the marks for the two courses are combined and scaled as a single course. What you are noticing is the effect of the Board's aligning procedure. They considered a particular raw mark in Advanced to be worth more than the corresponding raw mark in Standard, and so Advanced was aligned better. But as the aligned marks aren't used for anything except pleasing politicians and bureaucrats, this had no effect on students' UAIs.

 

[underthesun]

So it didn't really matter on my UAI, choosing standard or advanced, and it just depends on my performance?

woah, what a relief

 

[pri]

ud have to be brilliant in standard to achieve a decent UAI