The Universities Admission Centre responds to SBSs

questions, explaining the scaling of HSC marks for

tertiary ranking, or the ATAR.
It is important to note that both the HSC marks reported
to students and the scaled marks used for calculating
the aggregate that underlies the ATAR ranking are both
scaled marks derived from the examination scores
obtained by students and their school assessments. The
scaling undertaken on the HSC marks reported to
students is the process by which those marks are
aligned to standards.
BOSTES [the NSW Board of Studies] aligns HSC marks
to the published performance band descriptions for each
subject, so that, for example, all students who have met
the minimum standards for the course will receive an
HSC mark of at least 50, and all students whose
performance has met the description of a Band 6
student will receive an HSC mark of at least 90. This
scaling is performed by BOSTES on the basis of
recommendations for a panel of subject experts, and is
designed to ensure that students of a similar standard in
the same course will receive a similar mark, regardless
of the year in which they sit the HSC. BOSTES does not
make any attempt to align standards between courses,
so there are considerable differences in the academic
standard required to meet the Band 6 description
between courses, even when courses are in similar
subject areas.
The design of HSC exam papers and their marking
schemes is such that students only score marks on

questions when their responses show some evidence of

meeting at least the minimum standard for the course,
and the more difficult questions on the HSC papers may
not attract any marks unless the student is able to
demonstrate understanding and skill that is substantially
above the minimum standard for the course. Since the
reported mark for a student who has just met the
minimum standard for the course is 50, it follows that the
reported HSC marks are usually higher than the actual
raw mark that a student obtains on the exam, and that
this difference is sometimes quite substantial.
BOSTES scales its marks to allow for consistent
reporting from year to year of the standard of
performance within an individual subject. Even in
instances where courses share common performance
band descriptions, the same examination specifications
and a common set of marking guidelines (as is the case
for many of the language courses), there are substantial
differences in the examination marks required to reach
a particular performance band, which suggests that the
performance band descriptions are interpreted in
different ways by the subject experts for different
courses, even when the language used is identical. It
follows that it would be very unfair to use the reported
HSC marks to make comparisons of performance
between different subjects in the same year.
In contrast, the purpose of ATAR scaling is to provide a
consistent measure of academic performance across
subjects within the same year, to enable students who
complete the HSC in the same year to be ranked for
university entrance purposes. This is done in a way that

is designed to ensure that students will not be

advantaged or disadvantaged by any particular choice of
courses, so that students can be assured that they will
maximise their ATAR by studying those courses which
are best aligned with their academic strengths and
interests. The methodology used ensures that courses
that, in a particular year, are predominantly taken by
students who do consistently well in all of their units are
allocated marks that reflect the measured strength of
that cohort, while courses that in a particular year taken
by a group of students who generally perform at lower
levels across their range of courses have scaled marks
that reflect this lower academic standard. The method
also ensures that students who excel in a course will
receive an appropriately high scaled score, even if the
cohort of students in that course is not particularly
strong; again to ensure that students with a particular
talent for a particular course will not be disadvantaged
by taking a course that is generally populated with
weaker students if their performance in that course is
markedly better than that of their peers.
This process is applied in the same way for all courses,
without any predetermined outcome. In particular, this
means that if a small course were to receive an influx of
academically talented students, this will automatically be
reflected in higher scaled marks for that course.
In practice, scaled scores used for the computation of
ATAR aggregates are almost always lower than the HSC
reported score, and generally bear much greater
similarity to the actual raw scores obtained by students
on the examinations than the reported HSC scores.
The variations between actual examination scores and

ATAR scaled scores in languages is entirely consistent

with the patterns observed in other key learning areas.
You can see a myriad of examples in Table A3 in the
2015 Scaling Report that bear this out, not just language
courses.
With respect to some of the particular questions raised,
here are some observations:
The ATAR scaling does not attempt to correct for
disadvantage suffered by any particular group.
Universities take this into account at another point
in their entry processes, through the use of special
entry schemes and the awarding of bonus points.
It is also not the purpose of ATAR scaling to
encourage or discourage the study of any particular
course. The purpose of the ATAR scaling is rather to
ensure that there is no inherent advantage or
disadvantage in any choice of course. If two
courses were to share the same group of students,
the pattern of results in the two courses would be
exactly the same.
In most cases, the minimum actual raw mark
received in a course corresponds to a positive
scaled score. In no case does an actual raw mark
that is above the minimum received in the course
correspond to an ATAR scaled score of 0.
Interestingly, the cohort students who study the
English ESL course is relatively strong
academically, as is indicated by a comparison of the
distribution of the scaled scores for ESL with the

distributions for the two largest courses, English

Standard and Mathematics General 2. This is a
consequence of the fact these students are
performing at a level that is above the general
standard across the range of subjects that they
have completed, with the relatively higher marks
they receive for ESL simply being a reflection of the
fact that they have also generally received higher
marks for their other subjects than those achieved
by the broader population of students.
It is not surprising that a student who does very well
in only one of their HSC courses will receive a low
ATAR. That would be the case whether that one
course was a language course or some other
course. To achieve a high ATAR, you have to do
well in all of the 10 units that count towards your
ATAR. The units that are counted are your best
scaled ones, so there is no disadvantage to the
student if what seems (by the HSC mark) to be
their strongest course is not counted. The ATARs
that are awarded to students are the best possible
ATARs for those students, given their results.