Methods did not scale higher than last year- will this year be different?

[scaredukedevious]

So In 2010-2012, a 50 in methods was worth a 50.
in 2013, a 50 in methods was worth a 52; last year (2014) a 50 was worth 52.

Was this due to the exam being more difficult? or because there were a lot more people doing methods, and thus the subject became less competitive?

by less competitive, I mean subjects which have a lower amount of students tend to scale higher (spesh, EAL, latin etc)

Sure its not a big difference, but would VCAA take action, to make the methods exams harder this year? so there would be a wider distribution in students' scores.

[pi]

No one can confidently say what the scaling of Methods will be next year or what difficulty the exams will be of next year either. But you can confidently assume that Methods will scale up and you'll be rewarded for trying your best

[de]

In 2014 methods 50 scaled to 50.21

[Orb]

by less competitive, I mean subjects which have a lower amount of students tend to scale higher (spesh, EAL, latin etc)

That's not true at all. Methods has more students than around 95% of scaled-down subjects, yet it scales up.

The reason Specialist or Latin scales up is because of the demographics that take that subject. Scaling works in the way that the more academically inclined the group of students that take the subject are, the more it gets scaled, because it's perceived as more 'difficult' to get a great score in comparison with the other subjects available. So in this instance, Specialist Mathematics is perceived to be much harder to get a decent ranking than Food Technology (not dissing food tech, just choosing a high scaled-down subject).

In 2014 methods 50 scaled to 50.21

That's true

No one can confidently say what the scaling of Methods will be next year or what difficulty the exams will be of next year either. But you can confidently assume that Methods will scale up and you'll be rewarded for trying your best

Exactly! Every year you'll have a solid 10-15k students hoping that the exam will scale nicely, but in a significant majority of years, a 50 scales to 50, so 2014 still counted as a better year than most.

Just work hard, and let the VCAA mathematics nerds work out the scaling, it'll be mostly fair in the end.

[Orson]

Scaling depends on how the whole cohort went in the exam. It is not predetermined.

If the 2015 Methods paper is done very badly this year (because it is harder), it will scale high. If it is done very well, it will scale lower as more people did well.

[Orb]

Scaling depends on how the whole cohort went in the exam. It is not predetermined.

If the 2015 Methods paper is done very badly this year (because it is harder), it will scale high. If it is done very well, it will scale lower as more people did well.

Sorry buddy, it's not really...

Scaling is determined on the strength of the students sitting the exam, not the difficulty of the exam!