James Lu, I salute you

[wildareal]

Last year I put up a post about how James Lu was ranting, however having experienced the VCE myself, his claims are founded. The only gripe however, is the lofty way in which he put forward his claims. Opinions?

[happyhappyland]

Yes i dont like the scaling either.

Firstly, English should not be scaled down.
Secondly, certain lotes should not scale up by ridiculous amounts e.g. chinese
Thirdly, here are my personal opinion on scaling for certain subjects
at 30 enter

Spesh 6+
Methods 4+
Further -2
English ZERO
Biology 2+ (plus one is just ridiculous considering that biology is actually quite hard imo)

[brightsky]

I don't know whether this has been previously discussed, but I've got another question: do you think the imminent National Curriculum would, in any way, amend these "loopholes" in the present VCE system?

[stonecold]

I've already said this, but it is scaling above 50 that destroys the system.  It NEEDS to go, and I don't care for the mathematical explanation in regards to why it even exists.  It is pointless and unfair.

[mark_alec]

I've already said this, but it is scaling above 50 that destroys the system.  It NEEDS to go, and I don't care for the mathematical explanation in regards to why it even exists.  It is pointless and unfair.

Care to elaborate on how it "destroys the system"? And for what reason do you dismiss the "mathematical explanation" for it.

Yes i dont like the scaling either.

For what reason do you not like scaling? The answer "it is not advantageous to me" is not a legitimate reason.

[shinny]

I've already said this, but it is scaling above 50 that destroys the system.  It NEEDS to go, and I don't care for the mathematical explanation in regards to why it even exists.  It is pointless and unfair.

Care to elaborate on how it "destroys the system"? And for what reason do you dismiss the "mathematical explanation" for it.

I thought the scaling above 50 was the exception to the mathematical basis behind scaling in fact. Isn't it just a blanket +5 to all LOTEs simply because the government wants more people to do languages? Sure, it's unfair, but the government has their own agendas which they'll inevitably push into all aspects of their control. As for the +5 to spesh simply because it's difficult, I never quite understood that either given that scaling isn't decided based on the difficulty of a subject. And I do see that it destroys the system at the absolute top end of the scale as you often need these subjects to hit 99.95 (often 99.95 is above 210 aggregate). As for everything else, I really don't think it matters. You can do just as well with low scaling subjects.

Yes i dont like the scaling either.

Firstly, English should not be scaled down.
Secondly, certain lotes should not scale up by ridiculous amounts e.g. chinese
Thirdly, here are my personal opinion on scaling for certain subjects
at 30 enter

Spesh 6+
Methods 4+
Further -2
English ZERO
Biology 2+ (plus one is just ridiculous considering that biology is actually quite hard imo)

And these are your opinions based on gut feeling? Well they need a systematic way of deciding scaling, and they do have mathematical justification for it which stands as a form of justification far stronger than simple gut feeling =/ As for the English being zero, not everyone does mainstream English. Some choose to do lit or eng lang. Those who are in these subjects tend to be better at English, so it's harder to do well in them. Are you saying that those who choose to do these other English subjects should be at a disadvantage relative to those who choose mainstream?

[jimmy999]

The general consensus with scaling is those who do subjects which scale down end up getting much lower ENTER scores than those who do subjects that scale up high. I myself did three subjects which scaled up by a fair amount and one which scaled up above 50. Yet if you calculate my aggregate score without scaling, then my ENTER score will only be 0.05 lower. And so my ENTER score is based on the fact I did hard subjects that scaled up high, it's because I did really well in those subjects, and the one that scaled above 50 balanced out my English score that scaled down.

The whole thing of scaling was introduced to standardise subjects. It is fair, it's just people abuse the system by choosing the subjects that do go up a lot. And these subjects only go up a lot because the cohort are a bright bunch of students who perform really well in other subjects. Of course you can't compare the difficulty of subjects. For example you can't say that Methods is harder than History. For a bright maths mind, Methods is easy yet History would be difficult. A flaw exists there. It is only resolved in maths subjects where Spesh is harder than Methods which is harder than Further. Hence the harder the maths, the higher the scaling.

A lot of people forget that VCE is actually a competition. Your score is your ranking amongst the state, hence why there is scaling to rank your score from one subject to another. As with the 99.95 ENTER score sometimes requiring aggregates above 210, this does destroy the system. It means someone with 6 perfect 50s can only get 99.90 and not the perfect score they deserve. What they should be doing is if you get 6 perfect raw 50s, then you automatically get 99.95. The aggregate required should not be above 210, it should be achievable by any combination of subjects. If this happens, then VCAA can be happy that the years cohort is extra intelligent.

[QuantumJG]

Yes i dont like the scaling either.

Firstly, English should not be scaled down.
Secondly, certain lotes should not scale up by ridiculous amounts e.g. chinese
Thirdly, here are my personal opinion on scaling for certain subjects
at 30 enter

Spesh 6+
Methods 4+
Further -2
English ZERO
Biology 2+ (plus one is just ridiculous considering that biology is actually quite hard imo)

umm... English -2

I say get rid of scaling over 50 and all english subjects should not be scaled down.

[iffets12345]

I find it funny how you all complain abut certain subjects being scaled high, and then you aren't doing those subjects yourself. I agree some of the scaling is a bit ridculous, and scaling has already gone down for spesh, what more do you want?

You don't know yourself how competitive Chinese is, so i would refrain from judging.

[Chavi]

Agree with VCAA on scaling above 50 (and scaling in general). It ensures that students who take harder subjects are not disadvantaged. If you get rid of scaling, then a 48 in Methods = a 48 in further, and would not reflect the true capability of the student or the score they deserve.
Additionally, without scaling, students will be less inclined to select and persevere in harder subjects, as they will have no advantage over those taking easier subjects.

A 50 in Outdoor ed should not be allowed to equal a 50 in Hebrew or spesh. The VCE system has its flaws, but at least the standardization is relatively fair.

[shinny]

The general consensus with scaling is those who do subjects which scale down end up getting much lower ENTER scores than those who do subjects that scale up high.

But the premise of scaling is based on how well students in a certain subject do in their others. So if you take a step back and forget there was any scaling at all, those who are in subjects which scale down are already performing worse at an equivalent level than those who are in subjects scaling up before any scaling is applied anyway. The reason for scaling is then because someone in the cohorts which scale up could avoid the competition against these 'smarter' people and just head into the cohorts that scale down, making it inevitably easier to achieve a higher rank. The need for scaling is so that someone could be at the 80th percentile in a strong cohort and achieve the same mark as someone at the 100th percentile in a weaker cohort. VCAA just tries to do this via statistical inference. Sure, it's not perfect, but at least they try and mildly succeed. Removing scaling only makes the system worse. Unless someone here wants to take over being the head of VCAA's statistics department, I don't think there's much you can do to make it any more accurate.

I just think that the tertiary system needs more pre-reqs or some sort of priority system to even out the playing field. For example, someone competing to get a law place who had 50 for legal and English could be beaten by someone else who did a mess of erroneous subjects, but achieved a higher ENTER regardless. But then again, VCAA says they want people to be able to get into almost any course they want regardless of subject selection, so that's the reason why it's like this. I just think it's not a good idea because there's different types of intelligence, and you shouldn't be chucking people into certain courses just because they're good at something else.

[stonecold]

Agree with VCAA on scaling above 50 (and scaling in general). It ensures that students who take harder subjects are not disadvantaged. If you get rid of scaling, then a 48 in Methods = a 48 in further, and would not reflect the true capability of the student or the score they deserve.
Additionally, without scaling, students will be less inclined to select and persevere in harder subjects, as they will have no advantage over those taking easier subjects.

A 50 in Outdoor ed should not be allowed to equal a 50 in Hebrew or spesh. The VCE system has its flaws, but at least the standardization is relatively fair.

a) A 50 in any subject is an amazing achievement.
b) It is not okay to compare a 50 in Outdoor Ed with Spesh, but it is with Chem or Physics?

No one forces you to choose which subjects to do.  And it is clear that many students do LOTE and Spesh for the scaling.  For no reason other than this.  I'm not saying it is all students, but I believe it is the majority.

I personally couldn't care less about scaling.  I wish I had done Food Tech/VET Hospitality/PE instead of English.  And the food scaling is like -7 for a SS of 30.  

People should be encouraged to do subjects which they enjoy.  You will always do better at something if you have the passion for it.

[EvangelionZeta]

I've already said this, but it is scaling above 50 that destroys the system.  It NEEDS to go, and I don't care for the mathematical explanation in regards to why it even exists.  It is pointless and unfair.

Care to elaborate on how it "destroys the system"? And for what reason do you dismiss the "mathematical explanation" for it.

I thought the scaling above 50 was the exception to the mathematical basis behind scaling in fact. Isn't it just a blanket +5 to all LOTEs simply because the government wants more people to do languages? Sure, it's unfair, but the government has their own agendas which they'll inevitably push into all aspects of their control. As for the +5 to spesh simply because it's difficult, I never quite understood that either given that scaling isn't decided based on the difficulty of a subject. And I do see that it destroys the system at the absolute top end of the scale as you often need these subjects to hit 99.95 (often 99.95 is above 210 aggregate). As for everything else, I really don't think it matters. You can do just as well with low scaling subjects.

If you actually look at the scaling report, you'll find that lately the 50+ scaling has been dramatically reduced (in fact, a 40 in Spesh only goes to 47 now...), and people can get 99.95 with around 209.1 aggregates (meaning the days of 50+ scaling being necessary for it are over).  Also Iffets' point is true about difficulty - getting above 50 in any of these subjects in the first place is RIDICULOUSLY hard - realistically, even without the scaling the people who get the top scores would probably end up with pretty much the same score anyway.

Chavi has the right idea - getting a 50 in Spesh is a sign of VCE-intelligence far and beyond the ability needed to get a 50 in Further, for instance...  Also note how the 50+ scaling subjects are all exceptionally hard (LOTEs and Spesh, basically), meaning that you either have to be awesome to get 50+ in the first place anyway (thus making the system not so unbalanced, again because of how scaling works...).

[iffets12345]

agreed with stonecold, what there needs to be is more education for year 10s to understand instead of typical "CHOOSE WHAT YOU LOVE" (nobody listens to that).
Instead of abolishing scaling, educate people to get their facts right.

[Akirus]

Biased or not, I consider LOTE scaling, particularly Latin/Hebrew etc to be borderline 'cheating'.