How the huge task of SACE exams and results come together in our enormous state
MORE than 7300 bags of student work trekked over tens of thousands of kilometres, two states, four countries ... what you mightn’t know about a student’s final SACE result.
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SCHOOL life may look very different at Kenmore Park in South Australia’s remote APY Lands to metropolitan Adelaide, but when it comes to Year 12 assessments, the students’ work is scrutinised just the same as that of their city counterparts.
It just has to travel about 1400km first.
The work of some students will travel an even greater distance to be examined, including from Nhulunbuy on the Northern Territory’s Gove Peninsula and even from Beijing in China.
It is all part of a mammoth logistical task to ensure the work of all students who’ve been striving for their SACE in 2017 — the South Australian Certificate of Education — is marked “fairly and consistently”.
It means collecting thousands of samples of student work from every participating school across metropolitan Adelaide, regional and rural SA, the Northern Territory as well as nine in Asia, and bringing the work to a single location where a team of moderators check it against set standards.
This year, more than 7300 bags of student work have be collected and ferried by road and air to Adelaide, then taken to a makeshift moderation hub set up at UniSA’s Mawson Lakes campus.
There a total of 1160 moderators — experienced teachers from SA, the NT and Malaysia — are tasked with the painstaking job of reviewing the students’ work, as part of the end-of-the-year assessment process.
SACE acting curriculum and assessment executive manager Cathy Schultz describes the colossal process simply as “quality assurance”.
“It’s about making sure the final result students are given for their assessments are fair, reliable, consistent and valid ... and that each student has the opportunity to make sure the grades they’ve been given by their teachers are appropriate and reflect the standards of all students studying the same subjects wherever they are,” she said.
“The volume of paperwork is always enormous.
“When you get to see first-hand the size and scale at the end of the process, when every bag is collected and brought back to a warehouse before (the work goes back to) schools through a courier service, you really can appreciate that.”
Schools are required to submit student work for every Stage 2 (Year 12) subject to reflect the range of grades awarded in each class. To put it in perspective, almost 24,300 students enrolled in a Stage 2 subject in 2017.
Specifically, teachers are required to submit all A+ student work and one sample of student work for the A to E grades.
Ms Schultz says most teachers get it right most of the time, with just 10 per cent of grades changed in 2016.
“As teachers have become more familiar with SACE — introduced in its current form in 2011 — the standards and accuracy of grades has improved,” Ms Schultz said.
This year for the first time six subjects are being moderated online — English literary studies, media studies, music technology, Indonesian continuers, classical studies and philosophy.
“We are moving towards more work being submitted electronically because that is the way students are working and presenting their work in the classroom throughout the year,” Ms Schultz said.
“As students change the way they work, so too will moderation. Online moderation is part of the SACE Board’s broader program of modernisation, which includes the introduction of electronic exams and online marking.”
SACE from all far-flung Corners
MORE than 7300 bags of student work have been ferried to Adelaide in courier vans, trucks and planes over the past two weeks to be reviewed by a team of teacher moderators.
THIS includes pick-ups from schools across South Australia as well as the Northern Territory and even schools in China, Malaysia and Vietnam that offer the SACE.
SOME of the most remote locations where moderation bags have been collected in SA include Kenmore Park in the APY Lands in the Far North, Allendale East in the south and Ceduna in the west.
STUDENT work has also come from 25 schools in the NT, including Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula and Gunbalanya in the West Arnhem Land.
NINE schools in Asia offer the SACE, including in Hanoi in Vietman, Subang Jaya in Malaysia and Beijing in China.
THE SACE has been taught in Asia since 1982, starting in Malaysia, and then China and Vietnam. Next year the SACE will be offered at a school in Vanuatu.
STUDENT assessments covering 156 subjects from 337 schools are being reviewed.
A TOTAL of 1160 moderators — experienced subject teachers from South Australia, the Northern Territory and Malaysia — are reviewing the work.
A MODERATION hub has been set up inside the UniSA Mawson Lakes campus, spreading across 38 rooms including lecture theatres, tutorial and computer rooms.
THE bags of students’ work are stored in a huge warehouse where they are sorted into subject groupings before being delivered to UniSA and securely stored prior to the start of moderation.
A LARGE hall at the uni campus is used as a logistics hub, with smaller logistics rooms established to service yet more groups of rooms in the buildings where moderators are working.
MODERATION bags are counted and sorted by school and delivered to the moderation rooms. Each room has moderators supported by supervisors. A SACE officer oversees the moderation process in each room.
MODERATION bags are given out in a random order to moderators, who review the student work to ensure grades are appropriate and consistent.
ONCE the materials have been moderated, they are taken out of the moderation room and into the logistics room where they are recounted to ensure all bags
have been accounted for.
ON Saturday, at the end of the process, bags will be re-sorted at the huge warehouse, ready to be delivered back to schools by truck and plane from Monday.