Well CK, that's certainly not the story we got told last year in our first lesson of Economics, thats for sure. Or maybe none of us cared enough to listen properly. Seems logical, though, and more complicated and non-conspiracy-theory than the explanation we were given.
We got drawn a graph - and told that the powers-that-be (PTB... 
) of education wanted us all to lie on the one line. If we achieved a mark that was under, say, 50%, we'd get scaled pretty severely down the ladder, because the PTB wanted a big 'hump' in the middle of the graph that states average achievement... and smaller numbers representing over achievement and underachievement.
So if you get say 80% you'd be scaled up. And if you got say 60% you'd pretty much stay where you are. Does that fit in with your explanation?
Yes it does, because I didn't split it in two. The part you're describing is part 1, where the examination boards want to come up with their own results. Basically these are "good for nothing" or "feel-good" results, which you can tell (at least in the case of NSW) by the fact they're each set to the same average, and the average is 60 not 50. (Why 60? We think it's to make you feel better about your result).
The second part is all about the "scaling" which is where all of this data is fed into the computer and massaged. It's the controversial bit where subjects go up and down against each other, but it's not really moving the subjects as much as the students within them. Basically it serves one purpose, and that's to remove the problem of one subject being easier to get X% marks than the other.
(So if you enrol in a subject just because it gets scaled up, bad luck — it's only going up because smart people are in it and doing well, and you'll just get the mark of a bad performer and get pushed down by the hard questions. So the only good advice is, do the subjects you're good at. And enjoy Year 12).
After saying that, Yak is right too — the current system does what it does very well, but it only does what it gets asked. It's designed to give everybody just one single number and make it (too?) easy to hand out university offers. The universities asked for it, designed it that way, and they actually run it themselves (not the state government). Having said that, they also know some courses have bad drop-outs and really need good selections, so you get some courses with interviews you need to pass (plus a really easy UAI cut-off that some still can't get). Then there is adult entry, which has no easy "UAI" or anything to lean on (everything is mostly done by questionnaire). But most of all, there are a shirtload of special entry schemes, appeals and back doors you can use to get into a course if you don't make it the first time.
So what's the point of a UAI? Well, it's only about academic performance, mostly via written, heavily via examination. But when else in your life will you ever get a true comparison with everyone else? There's only a few blunt universal comparisons in life, like salary or sports records; power and fame are hard to measure; as is how good your family is; and health you can measure once you die. I'm materially biased in this, so of course I think it's good for everyone to know their universal academic level — not just guessing from what their teacher says. I guess it's good to know your BGL too, how old you are on the inside, and a whole lot more ...
For starters, they need to make a national 'school leaving' certification. If each State is so caught up in their own curriculum, fine, but there needs to be something that says "if you come out of any school in Australia, these are the things you should be able to do".
I'm really with you here (I'll explain why in a sec). But how do you mean it — is this really supposed to be a mission statement of high school, or is it supposed to be something to slap on the actual HS Certificate — in which case, we're really giving a checklist and NOT ticking some of the boxes.
I guess we're reasonably close to this already, by providing a set of marks for each subject. You can't compare a 60 in one subject with 60 in another — in fact, "60" doesn't mean "pass" (it means half the rest beat you, and you beat the other half) — but you can know that for any one subject, 60 for one person is as good as 60 for another person.
It's fascinatingly disgusting to still hear people ask "Did you pass the HSC?", as if a rank of 50 is some kind of high jump. It just means you did better than one half, and not the other. (You shouldn't compare any one year with another, but it won't hurt). In the same way that an IQ of 100 may not mean much, but it only claims that you're average. And "average" just means you beat half of everyone, and not the other.
Besides that, they really should take extra-curricular activities into account. For example, there are plenty of Asian/Indian robot children getting top scores in their HSC courtesy of 13 years of the coaching college production line. But (and I see this already in primary school) these kids, by and large, lack social skills. Do we really want our doctors of the future lacking basic communicative skills and 'real world' knowledge?
Yeah I've had coal-face experience with marking university work that was completely unacceptable, and being asked to let it through — or, even more to the point, academic misconduct that got a slap on the wrist, leniency for the same reason. Full fee or not, I have to face up to the question of mass education, and in the case of faculties like IT, whether we want to raise the bar and make it smaller (and shrink the whole faculty). Otherwise, the only alternative seems to be to let in anyone who asks — which is fine as far as universal tertiary education goes — but we obviously can't let the universities set the minimum entry (or exit) standards alone: They're materially biased.
We may have to find a better way to set and enforce prerequisites for uni degrees, or another idea is to really open up the process of marking university grades and make it really well audited — and that way people really can't graduate if they can't spell (and we can still keep their overseas fees). Random spot checks and whistleblower schemes
Big problem here. Nothing better than when you are a 17 year old lad and you have a young lady just out of Uni coming to teach you. Really gets the class attention. Yes Miss, Non Miss, Three Bags Full Miss.
Erm, don't know where you went to school, but where I went there'd be absolutely no work done and no discipline whenever a fresh face like that turned up to teach our classes.
CK.
