More on senior school assessment

The following letter-to-the-editor was submitted to The Courier-Mail for possible inclusion in the edition of Friday 6 February 2015 but it was not selected for publication.

Senior high school assessment

Matthew Dean (Letters, 5 Feb) argues that school-based assessments at Year 12 level should be scaled against performance in proposed external examinations.

Why not the other way around? External exams are high pressure, one-off activities while school based assessment involves tasks done under a variety of conditions at several points in the academic year. It can be argued that the latter provides a more valid measure of students' ability.

Ignoring the state's well-established moderation system intended to achieve comparability, Dean also suggests that teachers cannot agree on standards. It should be remembered that some of these same teachers would be recruited to mark external exams.