VCE Is A Competitive Sport

Have you seen the movie Dodgeball? It was on TV a few nights ago. Man, I love that movie.

Do you remember the scene where Patches O'Houlihan teaches the rag tag team from Average Joe's Gym to play dodgeball by throwing wrenches at them? That's VCE.

And as a VCE teacher it is both my curse and my pleasure to be the person throwing wrenches at you all year long. Because that's how you learn how to dodge. Although, this time you're learning how to dodge all of the most common VCE mistakes that people are making.

(I'm just going to take a few moments here to acknowledge something important. I'm writing this in September 2016. My bet is you are reading this at the earliest in December, maybe in the first few months of 2017 or quite likely a lot later than that.) So there are no comments yet. Hopefully, if people find this useful, there will be comments. Some of those comments will be positive. (Wishful thinking?) Some will be criticising my appalling use of commas (Fair call. I own that) and some will be pointing out that I use conjunctions (look it up) to start sentences. Yep. I do. Mostly cos I am a crazy rebel! I drink my tea with the tea-bag still in! And, also because I understand that the right language depends on the context, purpose, audience and style. So, please feel free to comment about corrections, errors, other amazing things, but leave my conjunctions alone.)

Anyway, back to Dodgeball. Although, now I'm thinking more about Harry Potter.

This is my quick analysis of VCE...

VCAA run the show. They make the rules and they enforce them. Picture them like the Dementors from Harry Potter - they will literally suck your soul straight out of you.

VCAA tells us which texts we can teach you, they give us a set of skills and knowledge that we should teach you, they give us the criteria against which we must assess you, they set the exam and they train the assessors to mark your exam. They are probably watching us right now, so don't move.

Your school designs, sets and marks your SACs. Your school cross marks your SACs so that if you receive a B in Ms X's class it is equivalent to a B in Mr Y's class (all you Bio kids are giggling on the inside).

At the end of the year you have a score of Unit 3 SACs and Unit 4 SACs. This score is used to rank you compared to all of the other students at your school. (Don't get hung up on that, I'll explain why later.)

Then you sit the exam at the end of the year. You write 3 essays. Each of your essays gets marked by 2 examiners who give you a score out of 10. So, you get a score out of 20 for each of your essays. If there is a significant discrepancy between the two scores, it gets marked by a third person and your two highest scores get added together (see VCAA are nice aren't they? No. No, they are not. They are Dementors and don't you ever forget it.)

Your exam score is then put back into the pile with all of the other students at your school. You are ranked again.

Your final Study Score (out of 50) will be your SAC scores + your exam score, but it will be adjusted based on how well you did on the exam. This means if you bomb out on the exam, VCAA assume your SACs weren't as good as your teachers thought and they give you a lower SAC score. If you excel on the exam, VCAA assumes your teachers overlooked your brilliance whilst SAC marking and they give you a higher SAC score.

So, your final Study Score is actually SAC + EXAM + Adjusted SAC. Another level of trickiness happens if your exam score is significantly different to what was predicted by your SAC scores, by your teacher and by the GAT. Let's not go into that now.

The final thing is that VCAA compare schools. The exam is the only objective test that students across all schools do, so they take this to be the most valid indicator of a student's ability. They use this information to assess how generous or harsh each school is with their SAC scores. If your school gives everyone As on their SACs, but on the exam students don't do as well, VCAA adjusts that school's SAC scores downwards. So, if your friend's teachers are really mean and give harsh marks, they will not be disadvantaged in the end. The exam is the great leveller.

The important messages are these....

1. Your SAC score DO matter! Try as hard as you can on your SACs. They will add towards your final Study Score, but also they are your opportunity to practise the skills that are on the exam and get valuable feedback.

2. The Exam does matter! This makes up 50% of your mark (and more really once you take into account all of the hoodoo that VCAA do with it). Study, prepare and do as well as you can.

3. You are not competing with your peers at your school. You are competing against the state. If your school as a whole cohort do well, that is good for YOU! It means that your adjusted SAC scores have a chance to be better. You should work with your peers to all be as strong as possible.

4. I hear students say things like, "I don't really care about the SACs, I'll just make it all count for the exam." Or, "I'm terrible at exams, but it's ok, I've done really well on my SACs." Both of these attitudes are flawed. Surely, it is obvious? The best way to do well is to optimise your results on both. That means be consistent and persistent all year, and then prepare as well as you can for the exam. Want to know how to do that? Read some more of my posts, but more importantly, ASK YOUR TEACHERS! They want you to do well too. The secret answer is FEEDBACK. That's the way to improve. I love you John Hattie. (google him)

John Hattie is my Patches O'Houlihan.

P.S. VCAA are not all bad. I'm sure there is some good in them somewhere. They take a beautiful subject and turn it into a ranking system, and as far as I can see their main use is for universities not high schools, but I am willing to admit I don't know VCAA personally. If I had dinner with them I'm sure I could find something likeable about them. If you know VCAA and think they'd like to have dinner with me please let me know.

P.P.S I do know the difference between literally and figuratively, but I used literally for comedic purposes. I do that. See my comment about my tea drinking habits to help you understand why.