S.C. scaling benefits, damages, says pupil

Press, 28 July 1986, Page 36

S.C. scaling benefits, damages, says pupil

PA Wellington The system of scaling of School Certificate results can be both beneficial and damaging to those who sit the examination, says a sixth-former, Carl Dawson, of Onslow College in Wellington.

Carl Dawson, who was a candidate in last year’s School Certificate examination, said he had arrived at this conclusion after what he described as a “drawn-out effort” to obtain details of the scaling system under the Official Information Act. The information he received showed that scaling varied wildly within the mark distribution of individual subjects, as well as between subjects. “The figures show that scaling can be both very beneficial and very damaging within a single sub-

ject, and makes it almost impossible to discover a student’s true ability in examinations,” he said. “It can have a radical effect on the future careers and lives of those who sit School Certificate, or indeed any other examination.” In Carl’s own case the argument is of academic interest only, because he passed all his subjects with flying colours. “My lowest mark was 70 per cent, so I am not carrying on a personal campaign against the Education Department. “My concern is that many candidates, including myself, want to know how well they did in relation to the knowledge tested, as opposed to how well they did in relation to numerous and varied pre-set pass rates.”

If the system could not be made fairer, Carl suggested that students be given the scaling, figures applied to their examination results so they could at least have some idea of how their marks were affected. But a request to the Minister of Education, Mr Marshall, asking that the scaling formula be included with examination result notices was turned down.

In his reply to Carl’s suggestion, Mr Marshall said concerns over scaling would be adequately dealt with under a new system of expressing School Certificate results.

The new system will give candidates a range of seven grades — Al, A2, 81, 82, Cl, C2 and D.

Carl said that the Minister’s reply was illogical. “The new grading sys-

tern will still reflect current policies on scaling. “If anything, it will make it even harder to determine the effect of scaling on candidates’ raw marks.”

An Education Department spokesman said that scaling was applied to marks in an attempt to compensate for differences between markers and between the degree of difficulty of the subjects from year to year. Using a complicated mathematical process the marker and year-to-year adjustments were made in one step. While no system of erasing marker and year-to-year differences was perfect, the department believed the system brought more fairness to exam results than unfairness, the spokesman said.