VCE results guide 2017: Why are study scores scaled?
EVER wondered why arts subjects seem to get scaled down whereas sciences often get scaled up? This is why.
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BEFORE students’ Study Scores — for different VCE studies — can be used to calculate each ATAR, VTAC needs to scale them to take into account different levels of competition in different studies.
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VTAC’s role is to provide a way of ranking students that is fair to students, across the different studies they have taken.
When VTAC receives each Study Score from the VCAA, it is calculated from the total marks the student received for each graded assessment in that study.
Study Scores for all studies are reported on a scale of 0 to 50, with an average score of 30. However, it is not a score out of 50. It is a ranking, or relative position, which shows a student’s performance compared with all other students who took that study in that year.
A student with a Study Score of 30 is near the middle of the cohort, or has performed better than about half of all students who took that study in that year. A student with a Study Score of 40 has performed better than about 91 per cent of all students who took that study in that year.
What this means is that the middle student in any study will have a Study Score of about 30. However, Study Scores don’t consider how academically strong the other students were in the study and therefore how difficult it was to achieve the middle ranking.
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For tertiary selection, students need to be ranked in a way that is fair to students across all the different studies they have taken. This involves taking into consideration how academically strong the other students were in each study and how difficult it was to achieve the middle ranking in each study.
Where the academic competition in a study is higher, Study Scores have to be adjusted upwards, otherwise students doing that study would be unfairly disadvantaged.
Similarly, in a study where the academic competition is lower, the Study Scores have to be adjusted downwards, otherwise students doing that study would be unfairly advantaged. Scaling ensures that it is possible for students to attain a high ATAR regardless of the combination of studies they undertake.
This is not always well understood and many students believe that to achieve their best possible ATAR they need to choose studies that are scaled up. This is not true and may even work against them.
If a student chooses a study that they are not very good at simply because it will be scaled up, the Study Score they receive will be a lot lower than what they would expect in a study they are good at and that interests them. Yes, the score will be scaled up, but from a lower Study Score. It is unlikely that the VTAC Scaled Study Score would be any higher than if they had chosen a more suitable study, even one that is scaled down.
The way to ensure that a student achieves the best ATAR is to choose studies according to what interests them, what they are good at, and what studies they need for future study.
The calculation of the ATAR is a complicated process, but it is the fairest system developed by experts which allows students to undertake the studies they want and enables tertiary institutions to compare students who have completed different combinations of VCE studies.
The use of the ATAR ensures that all studies are treated equally and provides students with a common score for tertiary selection across Australia.
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