VCE Stuff > Victorian Technical Score Discussion

Is there any safeguard against irrelevant or pointlessly difficult SACs?

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Collin Li:
Sort of off-topic, but:

Melbourne High sets their Specialist Maths "project" SAC on an extra-curricular topic every year. In my year they did hyperbolic functions. This year, they're doing first-order linear differential equations.

Personally, I found that it helped you deal with the extended response questions, where you are given something you haven't seen before, and you have to work your way through it.

Mao:
so you are saying that the problem-solving component, where a person has to deal with new materials, is weighted too heavily, and people who are not comfortable with new materials are disadvantaged?

I believe that is simply a way to accurately rank the cohort.

I can understand that for some, it will be a disadvantage, and VCE on the main part is about achieving in predictable settings. However, I do agree with your specialist teacher's focus on academic enrichment. Specialist maths is very close to university mathematics, and problem solving skills is very important. It would have been different for the case of Methods [as the name suggests].

Mao:

--- Quote from: gonzo on August 09, 2008, 06:33:05 pm ---Firstly it occurs in more than one subject so framing it only in terms of Specialist is almost besides the point, but (I'd rather be vague) every single SAC this entire year has been impossibly difficult and contained little of what features in the text book or what was learned in class, instead focusing on exceptions and using Spesh as a starting point for stuff taught at Uni. Although marks themselves don't really matter, people who got high forties (raw) in methods last year should not be consistently getting 35-50% on every Specialist SAC, as everyone is getting. As much as one can opine that problem-solving is good and it allows you to deal with new material and all that, tutors who have viewed these SACS and teach or have taught Specialist regard them as so difficult that it's almost funny. The teacher deems it more important to prepare us for Uni maths (which no one is interested in) than for the final exam. Anyway...


--- End quote ---

aha! so SAC results are skewed, which is bad.
"academic enrichment" should be encouraged only in a strong group, where average-difficulty assessment would give skewed results. In this case, however, it is clearly overdone. I do suggest you explain the importance of ranking in terms of statistical moderation of SACs to your teacher, so that he can tone it down and try to reflect accurately the ability of your cohort (rather than squeezing the cohort into an unecessarily small range).

I take back the previous statement.

at the end of the day, however, the best way to go about this is to either have a discussion with him or relevant authorities [but try not to involve VCAA, that'll be too much of a headache], or put up with it for another 9 weeks [not long to go!]

brendan:

--- Quote from: gonzo on August 09, 2008, 06:15:06 pm ---thus altering the rankings unfairly.

--- End quote ---

How so?

excal:
The talented ones at maths will still be on top and vice versa?

You should talk to your teachers, failing that, go up the food chain. It is the only solution. Blaming it on a 'sticky situation' and on a VCE forum will not help.

The audit process will be too late for you.

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