ESTABLISHING COMPARABILITY OF YEAR-12 SCHOOL-BASED ASSESSMENTS

THIS paper briefly outlines the dilemma confronting assessment and cer tification authorities in ensuring comparability of end-of-school asse ssments and proceeds to outline approaches adopted in Victoria followi ng the introduction of the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). I n particular, a description is provided of a new system for maximising comparability of school-based assessments which was implemented for t he first time in 1994. This system made use of a reference test (the G eneral Achievement Test) to check on the reasonableness of schools' as sessments and to identify those schools with unexpected results. If sc hools' assessments were within a specified tolerance band, the schools ' assessments were automatically confirmed. If they fell outside the t olerance band, the schools' assessments were subject to re-marking by two external reviewers. This re-marking in turn led to a decision eith er to confirm or adjust schools' assessments. The paper concludes with some preliminary observations on the outcomes of implementing the new system.