There is a difference between someone who appears to be smart and someone who is smart.
You don't understand my point. People who are "smart" are labelled as such because they "appear" intelligent to others in comparison. If all you have to compare with is "easy" SACs, then a person will suddenly become "smart" in that class if they get the best grades. And if you're getting 50% whilst everyone else is getting 100% then you'll say that:
everyone in the class is really smart
You may call someone in your maths class "smart" (for example), but if you think about it, you are always comparing them to someone. Whether than be yourself or to the average person in that class. If you compare that person to a genius such as Steven Hawking, then maybe you won't think that they're so "smart" any more. But would that comparison help in determining whether your cohort is strong? Compare the brains of Mac.Rob's spesh cohort with the mathematical brain of Hawking or Yamazaki, and you will find that none of them are "smart". That doesn't mean that the cohort isn't good, it's actually one of the best!.
It isn't particularly helpful in finding out if your cohort is strong or not by telling someone that you need to have people who ARE smart in your class, as "smart" is a
subjective term based on comparisons.
ANYWAY, even if you had a cohort of geniuses (non-subjective term, I think that you were trying to aim at this effect for you sentence) sitting easy SACs, then your SACs will not be scaled up anyway. So it's not really about the level of intelligence in your cohort (as genius does not equal top VCAA exam marks, and I actually know a maths genius of sorts and he never got in my class' top 5 for spesh or methods). It's all about how the cohort does in the exam and how that result compares to SAC results that determines scaling of SACs, and hence, strength of the cohort. And you don't need the top students (by raw intelligence) to make your cohort strong, you just need hard-workers who are willing to improve
Moderator action: removed real name, sorry for the inconvenience