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Author Topic: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out  (Read 17903 times)

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2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« on: December 15, 2016, 11:38:16 pm »
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Aaron

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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2016, 11:46:20 pm »
To be honest I (personally) don't pay too much attention to rankings such as those - there's so much more to student achievement than a median study score or percentage of scores above 40.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2016, 11:48:27 pm by Aaron »
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2016, 11:57:43 pm »
To be honest I (personally) don't pay too much attention to rankings such as those - there's so much more to student achievement than a median study score or percentage of scores above 40.

For example?
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vox nihili

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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2016, 12:11:06 am »
http://bettereducation.com.au/Results/vce.aspx?yr=2016

What does everyone think?

Glad to see my school's made an improvement. They've been in the bottom ten a couple of times and have rebounded to a median score of 24.



Aaron's right in the sense that these things aren't the best way to rank a school. Study scores are very misleading, as they don't weight for all of the extraneous variables (other than the schools) that have a demonstrable influence on student achievement. For instance, there's an extremely strong link between family wealth of students in the school's cohort, and student achievement. It's unsurprising then to see schools like MacRob, which don't have a single student from the bottom quartile, up the top. Interestingish data, but unfortunately very flawed as a method of ranking a school :)
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2016, 12:13:14 am »
Glad to see my school's made an improvement. They've been in the bottom ten a couple of times and have rebounded to a median score of 24.



Aaron's right in the sense that these things aren't the best way to rank a school. Study scores are very misleading, as they don't weight for all of the extraneous variables (other than the schools) that have a demonstrable influence on student achievement. For instance, there's an extremely strong link between family wealth of students in the school's cohort, and student achievement. It's unsurprising then to see schools like MacRob, which don't have a single student from the bottom quartile, up the top. Interestingish data, but unfortunately very flawed as a method of ranking a school :)

What are good statistics to rank schools then? (if you must)
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2016, 12:23:09 am »
What are good statistics to rank schools then? (if you must)

imo there really isn't a good way to rank schools available to us. NAPLAN does it better than ATAR though, for instance, because you can compare schools based on how they shape up against other similar schools. So at the very least, NAPLAN aims to see how students perform on the test whilst taking into account some of the circumstances that could affect their results (such as financial disadvantage, rurality etc.).

If you look on better education, they've got a few different ways of ranking schools. One is by median study score, another is by scores above 40. I suspect that these numbers are better in different situations. In addition though, they also have rankings based on the number of OAMs students have received at that school and so on. What this illustrates is that there are many ways to do it and no way is perfect, or even good.

To be perfectly honest, school rankings are better for the elite schools. The reason for this is that the demographics are pretty similar at these schools, so it makes it easier to be confident that the comparison is actually between the schools themselves and not the demographics of the students that attend. Once you start to consider schools that have more challenging students in a demographic sense it becomes harder to make a sensible comparison, simply because of the paucity of reasonable tools to make such comparisons.
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2016, 11:12:33 am »
imo there really isn't a good way to rank schools available to us. NAPLAN does it better than ATAR though, for instance, because you can compare schools based on how they shape up against other similar schools. So at the very least, NAPLAN aims to see how students perform on the test whilst taking into account some of the circumstances that could affect their results (such as financial disadvantage, rurality etc.).

If you look on better education, they've got a few different ways of ranking schools. One is by median study score, another is by scores above 40. I suspect that these numbers are better in different situations. In addition though, they also have rankings based on the number of OAMs students have received at that school and so on. What this illustrates is that there are many ways to do it and no way is perfect, or even good.

To be perfectly honest, school rankings are better for the elite schools. The reason for this is that the demographics are pretty similar at these schools, so it makes it easier to be confident that the comparison is actually between the schools themselves and not the demographics of the students that attend. Once you start to consider schools that have more challenging students in a demographic sense it becomes harder to make a sensible comparison, simply because of the paucity of reasonable tools to make such comparisons.

I do find it pretty accurate in determining the overall academic achievement of the school for different cohorts, as these %s and median study scores are linked with ATAR. They also suggest other things, My school consistently has an observable lower median study score but a higher % of scores over 40, due to having three accelerated classes pushing the scores up but otherwise the normal classes are filled with mediocre performing students.

Edit: In case you didn't know, you are able to filter for public, catholic and private schools. Read the paragraphs above the ranking.
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Alter

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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2016, 12:49:04 pm »
Another factor which often irks me is that schools will set up their high school curriculum in a manner that inflates these statistics artificially. One key example I can think of which supports this is my former school mandating that anyone who does 1/2 Spec (or GMA, whatever it's called) do 3/4 Further Maths simultaneously in their own, secluded cohort. What this means is that the overwhelming majority of the class can pick up a score in at least the low 40s, bumping up the number of 40+ scores in terms of the overall percentage. Sure, the ulterior motive that I'm suggesting exists might not be the only reason, but considering that these are students who won't even get to have three maths subjects in their top 4, it wouldn't appear to be of great benefit to the students themselves. I hope you can see what I'm suggesting here.

Similarly, scores have been bumped up by having Year 11 students only be allowed to accelerate subjects which are traditionally 'easier' to score an unscaled 40+ in, such that the overall percentage is, again, inflated. Consider that any Year 11 who completes a 3/4 subject a year earlier generally dedicates extra time and effort into these subjects, and combine this with the fact that they will be completing subjects such as HDD, P.E, Psychology, and Further Maths, and you end up painting a picture to the outside world that the VCE scores of a cohort are higher than what they actually are. Not to mention: students can't complete subjects such as Methods, LOTE German/Jap, or Chemistry a year early.

At the end of the day, these 'artificial boosts' could be considered negligible in the grand scheme of things, and they won't really be effective unless the school is already academically capable enough. However, they do illustrate how the statistics used to rank schools can be extraordinarily misleading, and hinge so much on the flaws of a VCE system which can be adapted to a school's preferences in order to make them appear better than is truly the case.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2016, 12:51:49 pm by Alter »
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2016, 01:11:29 pm »
This problem would be easily solved if the "High Achievers stats" only used scaled 40+ scores...after all, isn't scaling supposed to level up the playing field?
Yeah, I totally agree with you. You can't compare getting a 40 in Food Tech and a 40 in Latin. Perhaps it's logistically a lot harder to get the data to compare scaled scores.
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2016, 04:15:25 pm »
Yeah, I totally agree with you. You can't compare getting a 40 in Food Tech and a 40 in Latin. Perhaps it's logistically a lot harder to get the data to compare scaled scores.

More than half of the year 11 cohort of my school is doing 3/4s that scale up (such as Methods, Biology, Physics which are the most common). 2/3 of my Methods class was year 11s. Similar portion for the other classes. Not many got above 40 raw. We still have a lower median score and a very high % over 40. Maybe I should email VCAA to see whether their statistic of % is raw or scaled.



Note: These school ranking statistics are supplied by VCAA.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2016, 04:18:29 pm by exit »
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2016, 04:26:06 pm »
The 40+ scores % statistic is RAW and not scaled, hence certain schools that have a higher amount of students doing scaling subjects may not attain such a high percentage of 40+ scores, but may have a higher median ATAR. The 'school ranking' system is flawed in that way. IMO, Median ATAR is a better ranking system, given that VTAC already takes scaling into consideration.

That's weird because my school has an abnormally high % of over 40, and half or slightly less of the year 11 cohort did Methods 3/4. And  a large portion of the rest did bio/physics and such. Surely scaling is not playing much of a role. Maybe its just because I don't talk to 'bogans'.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2016, 04:28:19 pm by exit »
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2016, 04:41:24 pm »
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #12 on: December 16, 2016, 04:52:48 pm »
That's weird because my school has an abnormally high % of over 40, and half or slightly less of the year 11 cohort did Methods 3/4. And  a large portion of the rest did bio/physics and such. Surely scaling is not playing much of a role. Maybe its just because I don't talk to 'bogans'.

Pardon, I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here. Could you please elaborate?

It could be taken in a number of ways, and some of them aren't very good, so perhaps clearing it up would be helpful :)
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #13 on: December 16, 2016, 05:11:00 pm »
I do find it pretty accurate in determining the overall academic achievement of the school for different cohorts, as these %s and median study scores are linked with ATAR. They also suggest other things, My school consistently has an observable lower median study score but a higher % of scores over 40, due to having three accelerated classes pushing the scores up but otherwise the normal classes are filled with mediocre performing students.

Edit: In case you didn't know, you are able to filter for public, catholic and private schools. Read the paragraphs above the ranking.

Oh there's no doubt that % 40+ and median SS are good measures of academic achievement. The issues raised about scaling above though are also important to take into account; however, in spite of this, still a good measure of academic achievement.

What I'm saying they're not a good measure of is the performance of the school itself. A good school is one that helps students become better, not one that simply recruits good students in the first place. This means that you can't equate good results with good school, as it's not clear whether having gone to that school helps you achieve those results, or whether the students were destined to achieve those results in the first place by virtue of the variety of factors that feed into that (parents' level of education, wealth, social status etc.).


Filtering by sector is helpful in some ways, but not entirely. If you take public schools for example, MacRob and Melbourne High come out on top. Does this mean they're the best public schools? Of course not. Not only do both schools already select a cohort of high achieving students, they also overwhelming recruit students from high SES backgrounds. As I've already said, if you look at the demographics, MacRob does not have a single student from a low SES background.
You see the same sort of pattern for other high achieving public schools. McKinnon is in a wealthy area, so too is University High, Balwyn, Kew High and so on. You can't say with any confidence that these are good schools, because there's no way of determining the effect the school itself has on achievement, rather than the inherent abilities of those students going there in the first place.

Better measures include:


-how do the students' performance change during their time at the school
-same measures as above but weighted for disadvantage (there are numbers available to do this)
-attrition rate

and so on
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Re: 2016 VCE School Rankings Are Out
« Reply #14 on: December 16, 2016, 05:20:12 pm »
Pardon, I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here. Could you please elaborate?

It could be taken in a number of ways, and some of them aren't very good, so perhaps clearing it up would be helpful :)

Most of my year 11 cohort is doing subjects that scale up (almost half methods, others include bio, physics, accounting, politics which is hard). And I don't really hear about people doing scaling down subjects like Busman or even Further which contradicts the theory that many schools have higher % scores under 40s because people in these schools can only do subjects where its easy to get over 40 in year 11. However since I'm in the accelerated classes, I do not know what the people in the 'lower end' of academic performance do. I do talk with many non-accelerated mid-range students though. I do not know how to define the word 'bogan' but it is really obvious to know what I'm referring to if you were in my school. :) However they definitely do not get over 40s looking at published vce results apart from a several exceptions, since the non-accelerated classes are pretty weak. Despite this, my school is able to have a much higher % of scores over 40 than schools with the same median, beating most of the schools with one higher median score.

This suggests that year 11 subject limitation does not play an observable role in % over 40 at the expense of student overall results.  A school can still have good raw scores with hard subjects.. Hopefully this post is clear since it's quite hard for me to explain.

I go to Box Hill High if that simplifies the context. I genuinely don't think the students are near as wealthy as other areas (Kew, Balwyn, Glenny, UniversityHS, McKinnon). There's three accelerated classes and it's extremely easy to get into it. Many of the students come from areas with very poor performing schools in order to get better education. Maybe this is starting to change. Ex-private school students seem to be starting to trinkle in :)
« Last Edit: December 16, 2016, 05:52:13 pm by exit »
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