Assessing senior maths, chemistry and physics

Written by ACER Chief Executive Professor Geoff Masters and ACER Principal Research Fellow Dr Gabrielle Matters on behalf of ACER, the submission to the Queensland Parliament's Education and Innovation Committee’s Inquiry into Assessment Methods for Senior Maths, Chemistry and Physics was accepted in May.

The submission focuses on the use of assessment to establish and understand where students are in their learning at the time of assessment. The assessment process is one of gathering evidence that can be used to draw a valid and reliable conclusion about a student’s current level of attainment within a specified area of learning.

Such a process involves:

• clearly defining the area of learning;
• selecting domain-appropriate assessment methods;
• deciding how student responses or performances are to be evaluated and recorded; and
• bringing together records of a student’s responses to, or performances on, a number of assessment tasks to draw a conclusion about the student’s overall level of attainment in the learning area being assessed.

The submission is based on the educational assessment process described in Professor Masters' 2013 Australian Education Review, Reforming Educational Assessment: Imperatives, Principles and Challenges.

Find out more:
Read ACER’s submission

Visit the Inquiry website