How does QTAC do scaling for QCAA exams?

Table Of Contents:

• What Is The ATAR?
• What Is Inter-Subject Scaling?
• How Are Subjects Scaled?
• How was QCE Scaled in 2024?
• Conclusion

Are all QCE subjects created equal? Should you choose subjects to please the scaling equation? 'Scaling' is a term that may be floating in your head more often, given we're fast approaching final Year 12 exams across the country.

This article aims to provide a simple breakdown of how scaling works for your QCAA exams.

What Is The ATAR?

As you may know, the ATAR ranges from 0.00 to 99.95 in 0.05 intervals. It is a percentile that ranks you against other ATAR students in the Grade 12 cohort of your state for the year you graduate. Each QCE subject has a total possible raw score of 100, and the best 5 subjects for each student are considered in the ATAR calculation.

There are two variable factors that influence the ATAR:

• The combination of the your top 5 subjects
• The performance of your state’s ATAR student cohort in the year you graduate.

Let’s break down how exactly these factors affect your ATAR.

What Is Inter-Subject Scaling?

In QCE, there are over 50 subjects to choose from, meaning there is a huge number of subject combinations. This makes ranking students against each other challenging, since certain subjects may be easier to do well in than other subjects. Simply comparing students’ cumulative raw scores does not accurately reflect their academic ability.

This is where inter-subject scaling comes in.

Scaling is a method of objectively comparing raw scores from different subjects. It does so by converting raw scores into a common scale.

How Are Subjects Scaled?

1. Initial scaled scores

A student’s raw score in a subject is used to rank them against all other students who took the same subject (even the ones not eligible for an ATAR).

2. Polyranks

A polyrank is the average of a student’s top five QCE subjects based on their scaled scores. This number is generated for all students.

3. Individual raw scores

A raw score achieved by an individual student in one of their top five QCE subjects is selected. This raw score is then used to find all the other ATAR students that scored that same raw score in that subject.

Once we have a pool of these specific students, their polyranks are averaged. This average becomes the next scaled score. This process of averaging polyranks of students who scored the same raw score in the same subject is repeated for every ATAR student’s top five QCE subjects.

4. Iterations

The scaled scores produced in step 3 cause student polyranks to change. Thus, this process of averaging the polyranks of students with the same raw scores in a subject will repeat until the estimated scaled scores start to stabilise, and each repetition has a negligible change in scaled scores.

Here's an example to illustrate:

This table illustrates how the raw scores of a hypothetical ATAR student are converted into scaled scores through iterations.

NOTE: The final iteration scaled scores are taken from QTAC’s Scaling report in 2021. The initial and first iteration scores are only estimated to illustrate how the scaled scores change with each iteration and should not be considered accurate.

As you might notice, this student scored the highest raw score possible in Dance, but this subject ended up having the worst scaled score in the final iteration of the scaling process. Thus, the scaled score for Dance would not be considered in their ATAR. Conversely, Modern History had the lowest raw score of 83 out of the six subjects, but its scaled score ended up being 87.43, which brings it up into this student’s top five QCE subjects based on scaled scores.

5. ATAR Calculation

Finally, ATAR is calculated by:

1. Filtering out students who don’t meet eligibility for an ATAR.
2. Then, a Tertiary Entrance Aggregate (TEA) is used to allocate students into ATAR bands.

The process of TEA is separate from scaling; you can read the QTAC report which outlines this process. This report also goes into more detail about the actual mathematical processes behind scaling and ATAR calculation in general.

How Was QCE Scaled In 2024?

Now we’ll go into how to read the QTAC ATAR report, which you can find on the QTAC website. It has a lot of information about the cohort that graduated that year, as well as some more explanation about the ATAR, but most people are interested in how subjects are scaled.

Below you'll find a table of the best to worst scaling subjects where:

• Green = The Best
• Yellow = Ok
• Red = The Worst

2024 Subject Scaling (Ranked from Best to Worst):

Conclusion

In summary, scaling helps compare raw scores from different subjects in a fair way by converting them all into a common scale. This is done through a process of ranking students and averaging scores until final scaled scores are produced. The absolute amount that a raw score might scale up or down by changes every year, and it is not possible to accurately predict this.

It is highly recommended that you choose subjects that you genuinely enjoy, as this increases the likelihood of you studying well and ultimately performing well. There is no way to “game” the ATAR system, so just keep studying hard!

After more resources to smash you final QCE exams? Check these out! 👇

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