English Literary Studies first SACE Year 12 exam to be taken on computer in 2018
THOUSANDS of students will sit the first computerised Year 12 exam next year for their SACE — with plans for another seven subjects to go electronic by 2020.
THOUSANDS of English Literary Studies students will be the first to sit electronic Year 12 exams next year — the beginning of the end for handwritten tests.
And seven more subjects will have computerised exams by 2020, by which time a third of all students sitting exams — around 4500 — will do at least one by computer.
English Literary Studies, a new subject this year, is a revamp of English Studies that about 1800 students completed last year.
The SACE outline for the subject says the 90-minute exam will be “a critical reading of one or more short texts” that could include “texts with graphic or visual elements, or excerpts from film or soundtracks”, along with prose and poetry.
However, the SACE Board says details of the format and delivery of next year’s electronic exam are yet to be finalised.
The Advertiser revealed last April that the board was investigating moving to electronic exams, before the 2016 State Budget announcement of $10.6 million over five years to modernise the high-school qualification.
The rollout of changes will begin this year with online marking or moderation across nine subjects.
For the first time, external markers will assess student projects submitted online in Health, Media Studies, Philosophy, Essential English and Community Studies.
School-assessed projects in Media Studies, Philosophy, Classical Studies, English Literary Studies, Indonesian (continuers) and Music Technology will then be “moderated” online. Moderation is a large-scale checking process ensuring work assessed at school level is judged fairly and consistently across the state.
SACE Board chief executive Neil McGoran said the shift to electronic assessment reflected the way students already learnt and produced their work.
Schools were consulted through an online survey to determine which subjects were most suitable as early adopters of online submissions for marking and moderation.
“We learnt that students in the selected subjects are already submitting their assessments electronically to teachers,” Dr McGoran said.
“The fact that these assessments are then printed out in hard copy for submission to the SACE Board is inefficient. By eliminating this step, we free up time in the classroom, allowing teachers to spend more time with students.”
The other seven exams to go online in the coming years are yet to be finalised.
Dr McGoran said another benefit of the modernisation strategy would be reducing the cost and administrative burden of the paper-based project and exam system.
Last year, schools packed and sent more than 42,000 student projects for external marking, and a further 12,000 bags of paper materials were sent to a central location for the three-week moderation period.
More than 115,000 exam booklets and 180,000 result and marking sheets had to be printed and distributed.
