My main goal when sending students for examinations is for them to work towards goals, achieve and receive feedback. The whole process must be positive before anything else.
Unfortunately, the AMEB have demonstrated wildly inconsistent marking across video examinations and, at times, has demonstrated an inability to effectively give feedback to school-aged children.
This is due to the wide range of examiners, some who are teachers, and others who primarily exist in academia. Some exams have come back dramatically lenient (normal teachers) and some dramatically strict (institutional teachers).
This inconsistency is not desired, as apart from feedback, I do want a system that allows students to know what criteria they are being marked on.
We also don’t want feedback that is negative or discourages the student.
Therefore, the following will apply:
- Students currently preparing AMEB examinations will continue to do so if they wish.
- Students currently not preparing can continue with AMEB or transition over to ANZCA.
- Students who want to do video examinations will transition over to Con Brio examinations.
These are all reputable examination centres and are academically equivalent for anything from basic achievement to scholarships. Most importantly, they explicitly focus on the nuturing of the student more than anything else.
There is nothing that you will need to change, as a lot of the music is the same for both systems, but I just wanted to touch base in regards to the change if you want to know a bit about the reasoning.
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