SACs will soon wind down – and when the time comes, you will have only exams ahead of you. It’s often said that VCE is a game and, to a degree, that’s accurate. You have to give assessors what they want, it’s best to answer questions in certain ways, and you also have to adhere to various constrictions, such as time constraints. But just because VCE can be seen as a game, it doesn’t mean you should try to be super competitive with those around you. This is why.
The way VCE works.
You may be aware that, for SACs, you’re essentially competing with your cohort for a “ranking”. But when it comes to exams, it’s actually in your interest for your cohort to perform well. Here are some things to think about.
1. Your exam score never changes.
No matter what you achieve on your end-of-year exams, that score does not change. It doesn’t get moderated, it doesn’t depend on other people’s scores – that’s what you achieved, and that’s it. It’s not like you get “punished” for other people doing well, and it’s also not as though you suffer in terms of rankings, because they’re already set in stone from your SAC results.
2. Moderated SAC scores.
Your SAC scores, on the other hand, do change. Or, more accurately, the scale changes. As we know, different schools administer different SACs, and may also mark SACs to a different standard. These are things that threaten a fair system, so those SAC scores get moderated to be more in line with VCAA’s own standards.
On a very basic level, if your cohort does better on the exam than on SACs, those SAC scores will be moderated up. And equally, if your cohort does worse on the exam than on SACs, those SAC scores will be moderated down. Again, your level of achievement here doesn’t change – but the scale does. So, if you help others in your cohort and work together before the exam, there’s a greater chance that your cohort will perform well and, therefore, that your SAC scores will be moderated up.
3. Rankings.
The other thing is that your individual moderated SAC scores depend on exam performance. Let’s say you have a cohort of ten students. It might end up like this:
What does all this mean? Well, basically, we can see that the student with the highest SAC ranking receives the highest moderated SAC scores. But those SAC scores are the equivalent of the highest exam performance from that cohort. In the case above, Student A didn’t perform particularly strongly on the exam, but benefitted from Student D’s exam performance. This is all quite complicated, and honestly not worth worrying about too much. If you are interested, you can read more here, but the important thing to remember is this: intentionally sabotaging your cohort before the exam? That just makes zero sense.
Teaching as a study tool.
Of course, you should think about exam preparation more holistically; thinking about numbers alone won’t get you too far. The reality is this: teaching others content, or explaining how different concepts work, can be a really fantastic study tool – not only for them, but also for you. If you can get to a point where you can explain concepts concisely and clearly, you’re in a promising position. Doing so can also help you clarify which points are most important, and how the course interlinks with itself.
The best thing, though, is that if you try to explain something and struggle to do so, that highlights an area where you can improve. It’s really a win-win!
General life.
And going beyond all that, there are more important things than scores and numbers. It’s fantastic to prioritise your own study and to really focus on doing well, but if you’re actively trying to inhibit others’ learning, that’s a point where you might step back and re-assess.
There are many benefits of helping each other out before the exam, and you should really strongly consider doing so. Remember: we’re all in this together, and we rely on each other every single day. 👊
