Intro -
Within NSW, the Higher School Certificate (HSC) is administered to students who have successfully completed a satisfactory pattern of study in their final years of schooling. In combination with in-school assessments coordinated through the HSC course and externally administered final exams, student’s marks are determined. The HSC final exams assess the student’s knowledge and understanding of the content taught and learnt in their subjects. The HSC exams possess the ability to measure the progress of a system against past performances, identify areas requiring special attention and to set goals for future improvement. However, education …show more content…
System-wide assessment programs are utilized across a vast measure of students in educational institutions. The 2015 NSW, HSC Studies of Religion 1-unit course, is a combination of internal, in-school assessments, composed of formative and summative assessments and a final external assessment. The final HSC Studies of Religion 1-unit exam is externally administered, system-wide for all students who have satisfactorily completed the require pattern of study. They provide systematic and regular measures of student learning and performance. The purpose of the external HSC exam assessments is designed to investigate and monitor the health and effectiveness of an education system and to improve student learning by providing information to stakeholders at different levels of the educational system (Forster, 2001). The accuracy and reliability of the data received from in-school assessments, cannot be entirely relied on the. The HSC exams, externally administered, provide data and information on student’s educational outputs, increasing but not guaranteeing the validity and reliability of the final marks. System-wide programs provide this information for system level monitoring, resource allocation, future goals, areas requiring attention and performance standards. System-wide assessments possess the characteristics of generalization in their focus, providing information about the performance of students provincially in relation to expectations and trends over time and determine if there are groups of students who under perform with respect to provincial standards. System-wide assessments can distort the curriculum objectives if student learning only reflects the expectations of the assessment. System-wide assessments are a large scale program, which can potentially communicate powerful messages to students and teacher about valued forms of learning and they can influence what schools and teachers