HSC Trials - Analysing Results

Some Ideas for Analysing HSC Trial Results

Trials season is just about upon us for the HSC.

I don’t have anything to say about the practices of schools for trials. I do want to help with resources for analysing results, though.

Trial exams are the most HSC like exams students are likely to participate in and I think the information teachers get from them is invaluable. What’s most valuable is the opportunity to use them before the students have finished. Analysing HSC results is an important thing to do, but using the data well is more complex when the students the data is about have left the school. Trial achievement data isn’t like that. There’s one final push for these students before they’re done and even a little class time left after the exams are done. It’s worth taking advantage of that.

So here are a few thoughts I have on using trial data well.

Item Analysis

The best thing NESA give you in the RAP package, I reckon, is the Item Analysis. It’s excellent. I want to be able to do that for trials as well. I’ve built a template for displaying data pulled out of the Item Analysis in the RAP and I’d also use the same one for Trial Analysis as well. It takes a little owrk to set it up, but I’ve got it started for you so it’s not a lot of work.

Here’s what it looks like as it’s starting to get filled in.

Here’s a video on how to use it. It’s long and I misspoke in a few places. But I don’t want to record it again.

And here’s a link to the templates.

The templates are set up for the 2024 HSC, but you can change them to suit your trial structure. The video tells you which parts of the spreadsheet to change. Because of the way formatting works across programs, I’d only recommend using these with Excel. So download them, don’t open them with Google Drive as it’ll then be a different file type and the conditional formatting won’t work the same.

Here’s a completed Sample Business Studies cohort.

The colours at the bottom show the percent of marks achieved compared to those available for that cohort. So for Multiple Choice, there were 20 questions and 40 students completed them. One student achieved 5/20. Four students acheved 8/20 and so on. For 40 students, there are 800 marks available. This cohort achieved 582 of those 800 marks. That’s 72.8% of potential marks achieved. It’s important not to see red and green here as vale judgements. They’re just comparisons. For this cohort, question 24ai was the lowest achieving question. But that might be good for the group. I’m not sure. What I want this to do is to give an idea of where to look back.

Giving it Context

An Item Analysis is only of any use in the context of an exam. You need to know what the questions were for these questions in order to give them meaningful context. And that is going to be shallow without a knowledge of the students themselves. All I have given you above is a way to organise and visualise some information. It’s valueless without a context.

Interrogating Data

Data visualised is not data analysed. It needs to be interrogated. The value of data analysis comes from value laden questions and those need to be asked by people who:

• Know the course

• Know the exam

• Know the students

Once these three conditions are met, we can ask:

“Did students underperform in 24ai?”

We can also ask the same thing of question 23a. That result might be a bit of a let down. I don’t see how it could be, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be.

I want to ask questions like:

• Are there particular areas of content we’re over or under performing in?

• Are there particular skill areas we’re happy or unhappy with?

• Are there particular types of questions we perform well in or not? Why do we think that is? (depth or breadth of knowledge, skills of application of knowledge, skills in writing, answering the question asked, etc.)

Summarising Findings

I want to summarise what I find. A summary of of an analysis isn’t the analysis, but it should be the part you remember best. It’s like reading a textbook. I don’t need to remember the textbook. I only need to remember what I should learn from the textbook. Similarly, with an analysis, I want some way to summarise it all to be the document I use to make a plan of action.

This is my simple version of it.

Use it or don’t, I don’t mind, but it’s here, if you’d like to use it.

Planning for Action

Analysing trial results is great because the students haven’t finished yet. I thik analysing final HSC results is important, but it’s of no use to the students whose results are being analysed. Not true for trials.

This is the most important part of trials analysis. If it doesn’t lead to this step then don’t do any of the others.

I think there are two ways I want to think of this.

1. This is what I will do in the time I have left with my students

2. I think my students should… in the time they have before their final exams.

Question 1 should be worked through by the teacher. Question 2, I think, should be guided by the teacher, but completed by students. In a lot of contexts, this will only be of use to interested students. Trying to force motivation at this point can be counterproductive for some students. Encouraging it is always good, though, I think.

I think it’s helpful, once trials are done and results have been considered, for teachers to spend a little time reconsidering their last few weeks with students. I know there is often still content to cover and that just needs to happen. But if this process has been undertaken well, I think there’s room for some responsiveness to newly perceived need, or just confirmation of what was already known.

At this stage, I find it helpful to put it all into a timetable. When I break down the time I have left and break it up into small, manageable chunks, I find my optimism of what I can achieve increases. But do what works for you.

Here’s a simple format I might use to summarise it in a way I find helpful.

For students, perhaps something like this might work for your subject. I’d recommend using something like this as an idea template, then changing it to make it useful for your students in your context.

You can download a copy of this here.

Further Feedback

It’s so important that students have opportunities for further feedback after trials. It’s important that they take those opportunities.

I can’t stop thinking about a study I read recently about students’ willingness to take on board feedback and put it into practice. The findings were grim. It doesn’t matter how good feedback is, if students aren’t bothering to read/listen/whatever, and not willing to make changes based on it.

The reality is that there is finite time and effort available from anyone at this point in the HSC. I think teachers should save for the students who want it. It’s ok to be frustrated with the student who hasn’t done anything yet and wants the world from you now, but while they’re working I want them to have a proportionally reasonable amount of your time. What I think you have to do at this point as well, though, is let go of the students who just don’t want what you’re offering. Maybe, anyway.

The End Bit

Trials are the final opportunity for teachers and students to know where they stand in terms of readiness for the final HSC exams. I hope some of this is helpful in thinking through how to make the most of that opportunity.