The way I understand scaling is that they look at people who have been getting 30 raw in spesh (for example) and then they consider their other subjects and see what sort of raw scores they have been getting in other subjects. If the average is around 40 for the other subjects, then the spesh score is attributed to the difficult in obtaining a high study score for the subject and is brought up to 40.
If the spesh exam was hard, it means very little imo. Everyone is ranked relative to another. Indeed the thing about hard exams is that you can make a few errors if you are really smart and still get a high study score. For example, if the exam is so easy that 2% of the state get full marks, then losing one mark can have a significant effect on your study score: so some really smart people who score really highly in other subjects may get a lower study score in spesh. If the exam is hard, these really smart people (I guess this only applies more to the top end of the scale) will get higher study scores, which correlate more closely to their Study scores in other subjects, and hence spesh will scale less.
But still, even having said that, the effect of the difficulty of the exam is realitvely small. It's the strength of the cohort doing spesh that is important. If you have a truly elite cohort in one year, where people getting mid-30s are getting 50s in all other subjects (lol), then even a mid-30 would scale up to 50. If you have a weaker cohort, then perhaps the people getting mid-30s are averaging 40 in their other subjects and the spesh score only goes up to 40. I have no clue how the scaling works above 50, but I guess VCAA has a way.
That's my interpretation of how it works. Correct me if I'm wrong
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