Music 1 and 2 Scaling
It's not like the SMH told us
Today The Sydney Morning Herald reported on scaling in the HSC in Music 1 and Music 2.
Music 1 and 2 are difficult to talk about fairly, because there’s a lot going on in the way they are moderated and scaled. Music 1 has a poor reputation for scaling. This reputation is undeserved, but it comes about because there are some less than ideal circumstances Music 1 finds itself in. Music 2 does not have a poor reputation for scaling. This is fair enough, but it’s not without its quirks.
There are two ways of looking at scaling in the HSC.
There’s how a subject actually scales at scaling time. What is the average scaled score, the standard deviation and the maximum. These three things determine how a subject scales in just scaled terms. Few people look at or discuss scaling in these terms.
When we look at scaling in the HSC, we usually look at it in terms of how scaling compares to HSC scores. This makes sense as HSC scores provide a reference point that is more readily understood than scaled scores. Additionally, HSC scores for individual subjects are actually reported. But to make this comparison make sense we need to properly understand what’s happening in Music in the HSC.
Are Music 1 and 2 Related?
The SMH reported that, according to Rod Yager, chair of the ATAR committee:
“Last year, he said, more students who studied the Music 2 course scored in the top two bands compared with the more general subject.
‘This evidence suggests that the Music 1 cohort, taken as a whole, is weaker in music and more diverse in musical ability, as measured by the HSC, than their Music 2 peers,’ he said.”
Unfortunately, this is just not true. The proportion of students achieving Band 5 and 6 scores in Music 1 has no relation to the proportion of students achieving Band 5 and 6 scores in Music 2. A higher proportion of students in Music 2 achieved Band 5 and 6 scores in Music 2. That is true. The Music 1 cohort is also, overall, weaker in Music than the Music 2 cohort. But these two things being true isn’t demonstrated one by the other. They’re just two unrelated, but true things.
Here are the approximate proportions of students in Creative Arts subjects in 2023 who achieved each band in the HSC.
In the HSC, English Standard and English Advanced scale exactly the same. That is by design. English EALD does not. But when we look at how English Advanced and English EALD scale, we can see that the charts look quite similar.
Here’s what scaling looked like in the HSC for Advanced and EALD. There should be two sets of dots here, blue and red, for the two subjects. But the blue dots are difficult to see because the red dots have been placed over them. This is because when NESA judges HSC scores in English EALD, their alignment to the band descriptors for EALD and Advanced are so similar that they then scale very similarly. This is the consequence of similar judging in the HSC.
Physics and Chemistry, although quite different subjects, have similarly achieving cohorts and have a significant crossover of the same students studying them. The have, historically, also been judged quite similarly. This is how the two compare in scaling compared to HSC scores.
They’re very similar. They’re not identical, but you can see that there’s likely some relationship there.
Here’s what this chart looks like for Music 1 and Music 2.
They’re chalk and cheese. When the way an HSC score of 90 in Music 1 scales has no relationship to the way an HSC score of 90 in Music 2 scales, there’s likely no relationship between how an HSC score of 90 in the two subjects is judged. Without parity of marking at NESA’s end, you can’t say anything much about the tow cohorts one from another because of the proportions of students achieving certain HSC bands.
What do HSC scores look like in the two subjects?
Here are the HSC scores above Band 1 scored in the HSC in 2023.
Here’s what they look like in Music 2.
The skew and pattern of scores looks similar. But that doesn’t mean anything. The HSC is designed such that each subject gets to determine what academic achievement looks like according to its descriptors on its own terms. No one subject is beholden to another, with the exception of English Advanced, Standard and Studies Exam.
And here’s what it looks like for Music Extension.
HSC scores in Music Extension are bananas. I much prefer charts like this to resemble parabolas than exponentials.
How do the Musics Scale?
Scaling in Music 1 does not look kind.
It’s important, I think, to point out that although I show how ATAR contributions look compared to HSC scores, there’s no such thing as scaling up and down. Sometimes ATAR contributions are higher than their corresponding HSC scores and sometimes they’re lower. But to think of it as scaling up and down is a bridge too far.
If you’re not sure what I mean by ATAR contributions, and you’re a teacher, join my Facebook group, NSW HSC Discussion for Teachers, where I share loads of resources around the HSC.
Although Music 1 scaling does not look good, it’s actually just fine. Low scaling compared to HSC scores is only reflective of the reality that an awful lot of students in Music 1 are achieving Band 5 and 6 scores in Music 1, but not achieving Band 5 and 6 scores in their other subjects. According to the scaling system (a system that is pretty robust), Band 5 and 6 scores in Music 1 are judged at a lower standard than Band 5 and 6 scores in most other subjects.
Here’s how Music 2 scales.
It’s very different.
Music 2 scales higher at higher HSC scores. But at HSC scores lower than 90, the contributions to student ATAR scores taper off quite quickly. A low Band 5 in Music 2 is worth more to your ATAR than a low Band 5 inMusic 1, but it’s less than a lot of other subjects.
So what do the proportions of contributions to student ATARs look like in the two subjects?
So, by my estimates, in 2023, 20 students in Music 1 achieved an ATAR contribution of 99 or more. ATAR contributions in Music 1 in 2023 topped out at about 99.7. 188 students in Music 1 achieved an ATAR contribution of 95 or more and that includes the 20 students who achieved 99+.
The proportion of Music 2 students achieving higher contributions to ATARs than Music 1 is pronounced.
So What?
When we talk about things we need to take care. Especially if we’re using data to draw conclusions. This is because almost everything is more complicated than that and the HSC is plenty complicated.
There are things about Music 1, Music 2 and Music Extension I think are true because of what I see. But there’s plenty of room for me to be wrong as well.
I think Music 1 students are getting too many Band 5 and 6 scores. About 70% of students achieving Band 5 and 6 scores is too many. But I feel less like that about Music 2, even though the proportions are higher. I think there’s enough context to say that it’s too easy to achieve a Band 5 or 6 in Music 1. When high proportions of students are achieving top bands and that’s coupled with low contributions to ATARs from those bands, that’s a pretty good indicator that there’s something not matching up like we might normally expect. When 23% of a cohort achieves a Band 6, but only 9% of students achieve a 90+ ATAR contribution this is, to me, an indication that what people might normally expect to be loosely true about Band 6 achievement isn’t true here.
This doesn’t negatively impact anyone’s ATARs, by the way. A student can get contributions to ATAR scores right up to 99.7 in Music 1. That’s a lot. But the HSC scores required to get there in Music 1 are higher than in most other subjects.
Music 2 had 35% of students achieve a Band 6 and about 41% of students achieve an ATAR contribution of 90+. This, however, is still out of place compared to other subjects of similarly achieving cohorts. The Music 2 cohort, on average, is the highest achieving 2 unit cohort in NSW. The average scaled score for Music 2 is consistently the highest average scaled score for any 2 unit subject. Yet I never describe Music 2 as the highest scaling 2 unit subject. I describe Chemistry as that. Chemistry has the second highest scaled average and a Band 6 in Chemistry in 2023 was worth over 97 as an ATAR contribution. In Music 2 an HSC score of 90 was worth about 92.
Inequity?
The SMH article is predicated on an assertion that students in Music 2 are gaining some kind of scaling advantage and that Music 2 is more available to rich kids than anyone else, so there’s inequity there.
Is there inequity? Of ocurse there is. We have tremendous problems of opportunity and availability. The arts are vitally important to any society and we all thrive the most when one part of our priorities is to make sure that children and adults have the opportunity to learn and improve in aspects of the arts that interest and challenge them.
But the problem isn’t with the availability of an HSC course. The problem of availability of musical instruction and appreciation for children is not caused or exacerbated by senior subjects in high school. Taking away the extra opportunity will certainly help to hide the problem from the spotlight, but it doesn’t take away the problem. We need good arts teaching to be prioritised, funded and made available broadly. What we don’t need to do is recognise the inequity that exists and just hide it by taking away the opportunities for those who’ve had the advantage to excel. What we need to do is take away the advantage by making the opportunity ubiquitous. Do that and Music 2 classes all over the state will follow.
Inequity isn’t addressed by taking away opportunities for older, advantaged students to excel. It’s addressed by providing all children with the means and circumstances such that the high level opportunities are maintained, but the advantage stops being advantage because it’s provided to all.
Don’t be dummies. Don’t be like the Herald. Our children deserve better than that.