smurfygirl said:
I find this difficult to believe as you don't ever find out your unadjusted mark. And, scaling is year group dependent. It depends on how the cohort does.
Also, in theory and according to the criteria we are given, a band 6 is 21/25. Last year for instance, the Historical Period average was low compared to the Core section (possibly because it was the first year the core was tested) (about 4 marks), so the marks were moderated.
Unless I'm misinformed, they don't moderate section marks in the same paper.
The Core and Society are generally more generous marks-wise, then the Personality which is on average slightly lower in the marks, and then the Historical Period which has the lowest marks of them all. This is obviously due to the way the paper is set.
However, since everybody does the same 4/4 sections (but different questions, bar the Core), there is no need to moderate them - students simply lose more marks towards the end of the paper, regardless of their questions.
As to whether the
questions are moderated in any way - that's a big question and very hush-hush, I think. Markers mark according to different criteria in each question, obviously, so one might assume that a more difficult question may produce lower marks for every student who attempts it, which may therefore allow one to speculate that the Board
has to moderate them in order to be fair. How this is done, though, is impossible to say - perhaps they compare x cohort's performance in y question with x cohort's performance in z question, and then moderate that against another cohort?
If I
had to speculate, I'd say that the introduction of the Core was propelled by-and-large by marking, the same way that every student has to do a core in English, and the same way that every student has to do English. Ie, a student's performance is contextualised with their performance across the 3 non-Core sections compared to their performance in the Core.
Ancient is the biggest paper and has the most options, while having the hardly any questions, so I think the process would be unique. In fact, I think the Ancient paper had the least amount of questions than any other of my exams except for English and English Extension.
In conclusion, I have nothing to offer than to say that the sections aren't moderated - they're simply 'easier to harder' in this order: Core and Society, Personality, Period. Thus, some people say that it's better to spend a little less time on the former end, and a lot more on the latter.
