Actually raw exam scores have no bearing on scaling. Only the strength of the cohort in their other subjects does. Don't see how this is particularly a flaw. Using m@tty's race analogy, the subject you're doing could be likened to the length of race you're running. It doesn't matter about your raw time that you achieve in this race; just the number of people who you beat, and how good they are at their other races.
I know scaling isn't based off raw scores - that was actually my entire point. Ask anyone doing Revs and they'll tell you it's a ball-breaker. Don't you think it's a 'flaw' that it only scales by 1? Don't you think it's a flaw that the extra hours required aren't being properly compensated?
I don't see the relevance of pointing out the average exam percentage then. But anyway, many of the art subjects like viscomm and so on require long hours yet get scaled down even. Point is, long hours doesn't mean anything. One thing people commonly argue is unfair is this notion of people spending long hours and not being rewarded. While it is something that would be ideal in a fair world, VCE is a case of finding the smartest and hours spent isn't necessarily proportional to 'intelligence' (I use this term warily since I wouldn't say VCE really measures this). They're finding the best people for the job really. So in this regard, even if these people spent ages on Revs, they're apparently not doing that well in their other subjects, hence explaining the low amount scaled. Going back to the race analogy once again (credits to m@tty for it - finding it so useful
), it's like having an event that people do a crap load of training in to do well in, but when they go to any other event, they suck. So in a case where you're picking the best runners, who would you give more credit to? And yeh, I know that you can't compare running events like this. No one really does both sprinting and long distance and there is no 'standard' best runner. This is ultimately what I see as the flaw in VCE. Proficiency at different events can be likened to the different intelligences, and I don't see how someone who chooses a heap of art subjects and does well at them is more suitable to be doing a science degree than someone who did half decent in a range of science subjects. So in this sense, I don't see how you can scale subjects against one another - because you're effectively saying that someone's artistical intelligence is worth less because they're not as good in a scientific sense. They're totally different things, and if you chucked the science students who scored 50 actually into arts subjects, then they'd be pretty screwed. However, the VCE system seems to imply that they'd expect them to score 50 (well, even higher if it were possible given that arts scales down and science tends to scale up).
However, it's the only way to keep with VCAA's aim to allow people to get into almost any course doing almost any combination of subjects. I don't see it as being particularly productive but I guess people are often quite indecisive and don't want to be locked in. I just think that if they did force people to think about their future earlier, then there wouldn't be a problem in the first place. It's just that now people don't really have much pressure to think about it until VTAC preferences are due that we're having this problem of people being uncertain about what course they actually want to do and deciding last minute.
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