We’ve calculated the Year 12 subjects with the highest and lowest rates of A grades
There’s a big difference between the rates at which A grades are awarded in SACE Year 12 subjects. We’ve calculated them all for you to search.
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If you’re an Italian-speaking dancer who’s keen on religion, there’s every chance you’ll finish Year 12 with a bag of A grades.
But outdoorsy types more into physical education or agricultural production are up against it.
The Advertiser has calculated the proportions of students who achieved As in full-year SACE Year 12 subjects, using the latest dataset from 2018.
Considering broad subject groups, students taking foreign languages have by far the best strike rate at 41 per cent, followed by arts on 30 per cent. Most other subject groups, including English, maths and the sciences, are in the mid to high 20s.
At an individual subject level, excluding those with fewer then 100 students, Italian (continuers) is the clear winner at 45 per cent.
SACE Board chief executive Martin Westwell said subject grades were determined by students reaching certain preset standards; hence the different proportions of A grades in different subjects.
Prof Westwell said students tended to “drop off” languages as they were not as obviously tied to career paths as some other subjects, leaving a narrow pool of teens with high aptitude in Year 12.
“They are choosing Year 12 languages because they are really good at it,” he said.
Other subjects for which students tend to have particular passions also produce high proportions of A grades – dance 42 per cent, religion studies 38, and women’s studies 36.
Subjects where around a third of grades are As are accounting, business and enterprise, Japanese (continuers), English literary studies, English, child studies, mathematical methods, society and culture, and modern history.
Despite often being viewed as difficult, STEM subjects specialist mathematics, physics and chemistry all have the perfectly healthy A grade rate of 28 per cent, likely because they attract academically able students.
Prof Westwell said the standards set for subjects, the academic capacity of students who tend to take certain subjects, and students taking subjects for enjoyment even if they are not their strongest, all affect the figures.
“In education there’s always a whole host of factors,” he said, adding subject standards can altered if necessary.
For students aspiring to university, there are also the issues of “scaling” and bonus points to consider.
According to the SA Tertiary Admissions Centre, “the average ability of students will often vary from one subject to another, and this will impact on the overall pattern of marks awarded in each subject”.
SATAC “scales”, or adjusts, raw subject scores so that, regardless of which combination of subjects they studied, students can be fairly compared for uni entrance through their ATAR.
That means As in some subjects end up being more valuable than in others.
There are also bonus points factored into uni entrance ranks for students who do languages and certain maths and English subjects.
Only 16 per cent of physical education students achieve As, but it’s 26 per cent for outdoor education. In tourism it’s 19 per cent.
Biology, always the most popular science subject, comes in at 23 per cent, which is the lowest among the sciences apart from agricultural production on 14 and scientific studies 11.
As a subject grouping, the “cross-disciplinary” area has by far the poorest rate of A grades at 11.7 per cent, with some individual subjects as low as 3 per cent.
The Advertiser also calculated the rate of As for the compulsory, half-year research project subject. Close to a third (31.5 per cent) of those who choose the more popular Research Project B option score As. That compares to just 3 per cent for Research Project A, for which students’ external assessment does not have to be in written form.