Assessment of Units 1 and 2

• Assessment is based on the satisfactory completion of School-Assessed Coursework (or SACs) which demonstrates that students have achieved the specific outcomes for the unit.
• Students must satisfactorily complete the tasks set by the teacher to satisfactorily complete the specified outcome.

Assessment of Units 3 and 4

• Assessment is based on school assessment (School-Assessed Coursework) and an external examination(s) in all studies.
• All subjects (except Studio Arts and Visual Communication & Design) will have an external examination component of at least 50%.
• Assessment tasks for the School-Assessed Coursework and the weighting of marks for each task is prescribed by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA).
• The student’s level of performance is graded on a scale of A+ to E, where E is the lowest acceptable level of achievement.
• A piece of work which fails to meet the minimum acceptable level will be reported as UG (ungraded).
• If an assessment task is not completed or submitted, NA (not assessed) will appear on the report.
• The combination of School-Assessed Coursework scores and external examination scores will determine the students study score (out of 50) for a specific subject.

Statistical Moderation of School-Assessed Coursework

• School assessment is an important part of Units 3 and 4, and contributes between 33% and 50% of the study score depending on the specific unit.
• Since teachers have the flexibility in selecting the assessment tasks for the completion of the School-Assessed Coursework, there may be variations between schools in terms of the level of difficulty of the tasks and the marking of the tasks.
• To ensure that all School-Assessed Coursework assessments made by all VCE schools are comparable and fair to all students, the VCAA carries out statistical moderation of the coursework scores against the external examination scores.
• Statistical moderation adjusts the level and spread of the students’ school assessment in a particular study, to match the level and spread of the same students’ scores on a common external score. Since the external score is based on examinations done by all students, it is a common standard against which schools’ assessments can be compared.

Study Scores

• Study scores are reported on a scale of 0 to 50, with an average score of 30.
• A study score is an indicator of the student’s overall performance in relation to others who took the same study in the same year.
• A student with a study score of 30 is in the middle of the cohort, or has performed better than about half of all students.
• A student with a study score above 37 indicates that the student is in the top 15% in the study.