Programming and school assessment
packages for the new HSC

The 115 HSIE subject-specific events held in Term 3 focused on the importance of the connections between outcomes, learn about statements, learn to statements and teaching strategies. These understandings of the syllabuses in HSIE lead directly to a simple programming format that emphasises these connections. This package of connections is duplicated in a similar assessment package with connections between outcomes, task, criteria and marking scales providing important understanding about assessment.

The starting point

The decision in Securing Their Future, the Government’s white paper on the HSC, to move to
standards-referenced assessment in the HSC has had an impact on all aspects of HSC work.
Student performance in the HSC examinations is to be reported against explicit standards. The standard of this performance is represented in the mark, bands and descriptors for each subject, as indicated in the Examination, Assessment and Reporting Supplements for each subject. When the 2001 HSC examinations occur, these descriptors will become more subject-explicit as it becomes apparent what students know and can do in each of these bands in each subject.

Already the sample examination papers have indicated some of the effects of standards-referenced assessment on the examination. Many of the questions contain explicit criteria that indicate the focus of the marking scheme to be used by examiners.

School assessment

The Board’s Assessment Support Document outlines the implications for school assessment of the decision to move to standards-referenced assessment. The document clearly distinguishes between school assessment in the Years 2000-2002 and what will happen from 2003.

In the first instance, in 2000-2002, schools will continue to give assessment tasks, rank their students and provide to the Board marks that will be moderated by the examination performance. Although this process is unchanged, the Board document gives some guidance for teachers in moving toward standards referenced assessment by establishing closer links between outcomes and assessment tasks and by explaining how criteria and marking scales can be constructed.

The reason for schools continuing the ranking process for school-based assessment is that the performance standards needed for standards referenced assessment in schools will not be available until the Board publishes subject-explicit descriptors for the bands and samples of students’ work from the 2001 examination. Teachers will then have examples of the performance standards described in the band descriptors, and these will assist standards-referenced school assessment.

In moving to standards-referenced school assessment teachers will need to explore carefully the relationships between outcomes/task/criteria/marking scheme. Getting these connections right will provide good assessment tasks that result in sensible marking schemes. Where there are misconnections—for example, task doesn’t match outcomes, task doesn’t match criteria, marking scheme doesn’t reflect task—the connections are broken and the assessment may be unreliable.

The suggestions in the Board’s Assessment Support Document are about strengthening these connections to provide a strong platform for standards-referenced assessment from 2003. What standards-referenced school assessment will look like from 2003 is yet to be fully explained.

The task before teachers now is to move assessment in line with the suggestions in the support document as a way of preparing for 2003.

Programming

The links between reporting, examination and school assessment can be taken back into the actual curriculum documents. Here we see the outcomes flowing from the objectives and illustrated in learn about and learn to statements. These connections have implications for teaching and for programming.

Teachers select strategies to address the learn to and learn about statements in order to achieve the outcomes. Because these outcomes are clearly the focus of school assessment and external examinations, they also need to be the focus of teaching and learning. Programming is about making the connections between outcomes/learn about statements/learn to statement/strategies. The result of this programming package should be focused teaching and learning activities that allow students to know and understand the subject and to develop the skills that will lead to the achievement of outcomes.

The programming proformas used in the HSIE subject specific events were aimed at achieving these connections. They are available on the New HSC web site http://www.newhsc.schools.nsw.edu.au. This form of programming helps to establish the connections but it is not a teaching sequence. Individual teachers will still need to prepare lesson sequences that include the strategies that make up the program.

Curriculum design

The decision to report student performance by standards-referenced assessment has implications even for syllabus design. The development exercise recently completed by the Board of Studies has resulted in syllabuses that follow a format that can be matched with the decisions about reporting. The pivotal role of outcomes and the learn about and learn to statements provide the complete chain: curriculum design-programming-teaching-school assessment-external examination-reporting.

When viewed in this light the whole of the new HSC can be seen as a single package to deliver improved curriculum, teaching, assessment and reporting.

John Gore
CEO, HSIE