OK...what's this "moderated" business? (1 Viewer)

[airie]

This is what I understand on the calculation of your Internal Assessment mark:

You are ranked for the subject among the other students in your year. You go and do the HSC external exam. They pool all the marks (aligned external assessment mark, where you keep your own mark for the external) gained by people from your school together, and rank them. They then assign the mark corresponding to your rank to you, as your internal mark ie. if you were ranked the 17th, you would get the 17th highest mark gained by your year for this subject. That's fine, I understand all that.

But the other day this person was talking about "moderated" internal assessment marks, and that "if you are the top few in an academically weak cohort, your marks will be dragged down". So, what, do they look at the marks gained by your year overall, and decide to twitch it if all of you seem smart, or too dumb? I thought the marks would only be processed by scaling and alignment, which will affect the marks for everyone in the state. If this is true, what's with the "top few dragged down in a dumb cohort" business? Just curious. Doesn't seem very fair to people in, say, country schools, if their marks are somehow "moderated" to their disadvantage. Can anyone please explain this?

 

[airie]

So...does anyone know?

 

[A l]

One's a myth, one's a fact....
You decide which one is which.....

 

[volition]

yeah, you don't get moderated down just for having 'dumb people' in your class, provided you beat them in the internal assessments and score well enough in the external HSC exams.

Oh yeah, and I thought I'd just throw in that you don't necessarily actually get "the 17th best mark" it'll vary depending on the spread of candidates, taking into account the gaps between you and your classmates. Just in case you didn't know.

 

[YBK]

What if you're comming 2nd, and the person comming first is only beating you slightly... and the HSC comes and BAM you get much higher than him. Would you get his mark for the internal, assuming he comes 2nd?

 

[airie]

I thought I'd just throw in that you don't necessarily actually get "the 17th best mark" it'll vary depending on the spread of candidates, taking into account the gaps between you and your classmates. Just in case you didn't know.

What does that mean? That sounds like that 'moderated' business people are talking about So what exactly do they do when they 'take into account the gaps between you and your classmate'?

 

[airie]

Hmm, and I heard that sometimes students in country schools get additional UAI points for some uni entries, is that true? Or maybe it's just that the requirements for some are lowered, not necessarily "adding" points?

 

[angmor]

its a scheme you have to apply for. its not necessarily addtional UAI points, they just have a more flexible entry scheme.