Basic stuff first: Study score caps at 50 and Can't be less than 1. Although I've never heard of a SS of 1 so chances are the lower limit might be a bit higher than that. Study score for any given class is made up of three graded assessments (GAs); generally these will be 'unit 3', 'unit 4' and 'exam', but in maths (and maybe other classes?? I don't read study designs for fun
) it's 'unit 3/4', 'exam 1' and 'exam 2'.
The exams are pretty self-explanatory, but 'unit x' refers to your SAC average for a subject. These values can be changed to be lower or higher depending on how difficult the VCAA decides your work is, which is determined through audits (they random grab a number of SACs (completed/marked) and check them to make sure they pertain to the study design and that the teachers haven't marked it too easy) and the General Achievement Test (GAT), which assesses general skills like relatively basic numeracy and literacy (think NAPLAN, but for big kids
). If a cohort does exceptionally well on the GAT, SAC scores will be scaled up because that means that they are performing above the expected level (good examples of this are selective schools like MHS and MacRob that 'weed out' potential poor scores and raise their averages significantly; but also by only accepting high-level students they're also able to teach at a higher level). Similarly, if a school performs averagely, little or no change will be made to SAC scores; and the same with school that do poorly - their marks will be scaled down. On the individual level, exam scores will also play a part in how SACs are scaled.
As an example; a student at the Imaginary Selective School for Boys (ISSB) averaged about 86% for his SACs but his school performs very well on the GAT. Another student, studying the same subject at Another Made Up Public School (AMUPS) , manages 96%. Unfortunately, this school performs pretty far below average on the GAT. Their scaled scores respectively could look closer to 97% and 84%, respectively. This doesn't have an effect on ranking, but rather serves to standardise the scores across the state so they can be properly compared.
That on its own wouldn't make the system fair though - if that were the case no one who cared about their results would go to a public school because it's very unlikely that they could manage a high average (and usually 90%+ on SACs is paramount for a high SS in competitive subjects, like maths), and even if they did it would be adjusted to fit their cohort better so a SAC average of 100% would be less like finding a shiny ralts (1/4096, ~0.02%) and more like hatching a modest shiny ralts that learns synchronoise (??, far less than 0.02% though
). Anyway, to re-even the playing field, these high-averaging students (let's assume they're both rank 1 because I don't understand rankings very well. (Thankfully,
Hamo does)
) are assessed on the same exam (obviously) so if the AMUPS kid can manage a high score then their SACs can still be scaled up to 100%. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about what exam scores are cut-offs for SAC scaling but I assume that it's normally distributed - point is, high exam marks ⇒ high study score.
But not all GAs are created equally. In a subject like Literature, it's weighted 25:25:50 (GA1:GA2:GA3), where GA1 is unit 3 SACs, GA2 is unit 4 SACs and GA3 is the exam. This setup is generally considered the 'equal' one and appears across a couple of other subjects. In Methods and Specialist, it's more like 17:17:22:44 (unit 3 : unit 4 : exam 1 : exam 2), which first and foremost is not three GAs and that's not right. What happens is the average between unit 3 and unit 4 is used - if a student had an average of 87% for unit 3 and an average of 93% for unit 4, their unscaled GA1 will like more like 90%. Not particularly related, but if you're curious why it's 22:44 for the exams it's partly because Exam 2 is calculator and note active. Also interesting is because further maths is always calc/note active the GAs are nearly exactly equal, at (34:33:33).
You'd think that'd be it, but nope - there's more. Study Scores are also normally distributed - far fewer students will get a SS of 50 than those who get 30. I don't know the exact numbers or a way to model them (although if someone could point me in that direction, that'd be cool), but there's some littered through the VCAA website and the documents that they publish throughout the year.
Finally, not all subjects are created equal - some study scores scale up, and some study scores scale down. This is determined by exam scores - if the highest mark for an exam is 80% (as an example) then the exam is classed more difficult than normal; this won't hurt the study scores of anyone in the subject because the scores will be standardised (actually they would anyway but that's not the point) and, most likely, that 80% will be treated as 100%. It can also be determined in a more general sense - the easiest example is with maths again. Specialist is harder than further maths so it wouldn't be fair if a 30 in specialist was the same as a 30 in further (
have a look at this, if you're curious). Not sure on the exact workings of this, but I believe there's a 'base in/decrease', then give or take a bit depending on how the exam goes.
Then a student's scaled study scores are put together in an 'aggregate' which is then modeled in a normal distribution to calculate the ATAR. Not going to get into that too much, but only 6 study scores can be included in an ATAR calculation. Further restrictions are that your top 3 study scores and your top english are the only ones worth full value. No more than two maths or two englishes can be included in
an ATAR calculation this main part of the aggregate. This roughly defines your 'primary four', and any subjects that are not apart of the primary 4 are worth 10% of their study score (theoretically up to +5.5*). If you've completed more than 6 VCE subjects, your 6 highest scores will be used and the others will be ignored.
* This value is assuming a 50 in specialist maths, which scales to 55. I said 'theoretically' because there's no way a 55 wouldn't be included in your primary four because it's the highest possible study score (I believe) for any class. Pretty sure since there are so few other subjects that are scaled over 50 (Methods, barely. Maybe one or two others?) that the maximum possible aggregate you could get for a 10% increase is 5.
although imo literature should scale more, vcaa pls
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