Stage 6 Curriculum Assessment and Support

This page and the links provided are to assist our senior students with current information around their assessment in years 11 and 12. This can be a complex area to navigate in senior schooling and these pages should provide information which will answer those questions. We always recommend that students speak with their teachers if they need advice around their assessment in their various classes.

Purpose of Assessment

Assessment is the process of identifying, gathering and interpreting information about student achievement. It can be used for a number of key purposes, including to:

• Assist student learning.
• Provide information on a student’s learning and progress in a course in relation to the syllabus outcomes.
• Provide evidence of satisfactory completion of a course.

In the context of the Higher School Certificate (HSC), a major requirement of our internal assessment program is to provide a summative measure of each student's achievement in each course based on:

• A wider range of syllabus outcomes than may be measured by an external examination alone.
• Multiple measures and observations made throughout the HSC course rather than a single assessment event.

It is a requirement of the HSC school assessment program that for each course taught, schools must establish a program of assessment tasks. These tasks are conducted throughout Year 12 and each has a weighting determined by the school within guidelines provided by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA). School-based assessment tasks are linked to standards because the tasks focus on outcomes. They are valid instruments for what they are designed to assess, and where appropriate, the marking guidelines are related to the wording of the outcomes and the performance band descriptors.