Assessment resources
Assessment is the ongoing process of gathering, analysing and reflecting on evidence to make informed judgments about the achievement or capabilities of individuals and cohorts. It plays an integral role in improving student learning and informing teaching.
The following sections contain links to assessment and reporting advice, resources to support the design of quality assessment, such as techniques and conditions and standards elaborations, and resources to support quality assurance and effective feedback.
The following information outlines the K–12 assessment position of the QCAA and provides a foundation for building and clarifying knowledge and understanding of assessment literacy.
Reporting
Schools are required to provide parents/carers with a report on each student twice a year. In most schools, this takes place at the end of each semester.
Schooling sectors and/or employing authorities provide advice for schools about reporting requirements.
Quality assessment gives students the best possible opportunity to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do. It provides meaningful information about students’ strengths, learning needs and achievements. Quality assessment improves teaching and helps students learn.
Techniques and conditions provide advice that supports teachers to develop range and balance within an assessment program, giving students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and skills across a year or band of years.
The QCAA has developed standards elaborations from the Australian Curriculum achievement standards. The standards elaborations provide teachers with a resource for making consistent, comparable and defensible judgments about how well, on a five-point scale, students have demonstrated what they know, understand and can do.
The standards elaborations can be used to:
- make consistent and comparable judgments, on a five-point scale, about the evidence of learning in a folio of student work across a year/band of learning
- develop task-specific marking guides for individual assessment tasks
- quality assure planning documents to ensure coverage of the achievement standard across as year/band of years.
- Prep–Year 2 standard elaborations: Glossary of qualifiers (PDF, 164.8 KB)
- Years 3–10 standard elaborations: Glossary of qualifiers (PDF, 165.6 KB)
- Year 7 History standard elaborations (DOCX, 303.6 KB) PDF version (213.9 KB)
- Year 8 History standard elaborations (DOCX, 303.9 KB) PDF version (216.0 KB)
- Year 9 History standard elaborations (DOCX, 303.5 KB) PDF version (212.1 KB)
- Year 10 History standard elaborations (DOCX, 303.9 KB) PDF version (215.1 KB)
Moderation can strengthen quality assessment practices by supporting teachers to make consistent and comparable judgments about students’ progress and achievement.
- Moderation (PDF, 140.6 KB)
- Calibration moderation model (PDF, 114.0 KB)
- Consensus moderation model (PDF, 113.7 KB)
- Expert moderation model (PDF, 108.5 KB)
Templates
Last updated 8 February 2024