How legit are the sac scores given to you by school teachers?

[seanlimtj]

Hey guys, I completed the VCE last year and managed to do pretty well; one thing that really confused me though was my English score which I was extremely happy with. Achieving constant 2nd bands and was ranked around 30th in the year level. My english teacher really like me however she complained that my essays were 'too sophisticated', whereas my english tutor had praised my essays and said I would get a 45+, which i managed to get .

Other kids on the other hand had been awarded top bands each SAC but when i showed their essays to my tutor he said he didn't like them. In the end the SAC scores did not reflect our study scores and I had just wanted to pose the question: how accurate would a teacher's judgement be? Personally I went to Balwyn high, reknowned to be a great school and one which i would not had expect to make such mistakes.

At the moment im not too concerned anymore since its all done for me, however I was just wondering if similar sorts of issues happen in other schools.

[Mellyboo]

English is subjective, what one teacher likes, the other might not, hence why every english essay is marked twice by two different examiners. SACs do indicate level of performance, perhaps not very accurately. If it was completely useless, they would stop all assessments during the year. Pre-VCE, the HSC Final exams accounted for up to 70% of the study score. I imagine that VCAA/education dpt. would've conducted extensive research to make the switchover. I'd say the current design is pretty fair. But thats just me. 

[meganrobyn]

There are some qualities that are close to objective - it's very difficult to find someone who thinks a majority-opinion 8/10 is a 4/10, for instance, or vice versa. But then the smaller details are more up for grabs. When it comes to those, I think it is largely a matter of individual judgment: some people have high standards and others lower; some people like one style and others a different one; some people enjoy reading what they want to hear, while others are more open to new approaches and ideas.

Classroom teachers are more prone, in my experience, to marking based on what they wanted to read, whereas assessors simply can't have expectations that rigid - marking work from across the state gives you such a variety of approaches it's virtually impossible to apply the same standards and formulae as you can in your own classroom.

Essentially, I think you need to take the marks you get in context of the person giving them, and the environment in which they give them. Does your teacher seem to prefer one style over another? Does your teacher have flexible standards or rigid ones? Does your teacher see good work as still faulty, or faulty work as still good? Does your teacher like whipping you in SACs or encouraging you? Does your teacher have a track record of agreeing with the final exam results or differing from them? And so on. None of this invalidates the mark they give: it just informs it. By knowing the person giving you the mark and feedback you're simply making yourself better able to assess their strengths and weaknesses as measures of performance.

Upshot: totally depends on the teacher.