Talk:Overall Position

Criticisms
The OP is not an indication of how well the student has peformed in their senior studies, because it is how well you do in the QCS test, the system is biased and unfair.

 This section is quite POV. Some elite private schools also tend to be better at fostering... for instance smacks of the elitism so common in Australian private schools. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aioth (talk • contribs) 16:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC).
 * I agree it is POV, although I also believe the majority of year 12 students believe some of these rumours, and some are true, they are just exagerated. I've tried to explain the origins of some of the myths and explain the truth in them. Still POV though. --DanielBC 09:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Just for the record, I'm a year twelve student. We've received a lot of info about how our OP is calculated and I don't think there's anyone in my cohort who still believe either of the two Bias sections. Since these are refuted in the article, perhaps it's a good idea to stick them under "Myths" or something. --Aioth 04:05, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Does anyone have a problem with the removal of the Bias Toward Certain Schools section? It starts off equating large school to elite private schools, then elite private schools to any "elite" school. The whole basis for the paragraph is that schools receive OPs roughly proportional to the size of their student population. --Aioth 12:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Some parental concerns are confirmed (not dispelled) by the information in the Wikipedia article. (It would be difficult to find an external citation for verbal concerns, however.) Two in particular. 1: The effects of good teaching are eliminated. The marks you receive in a subject have already gone through moderation, so a VHA at one school should be equivalent to a VHA at another. However, the QCST scores of the two schools will differ. Good teaching can raise a class's marks in a subject, but it is very difficult to raise students' overall QCST score. A well-taught but low-QCST class's scores are normalised downwards for OP purposes to match the bad QCST score, thus eliminating the benefit from the good teaching. 2: Unless you are a statistical stand-out (an enormous gap to the rest of the class), your results are directly affected by your classmates' ability. Because the teaching in any class tends to target the average student in that class, even a high ability student is unlikely to be a statistical stand-out in the results. Overall: Most parents quite reasonably conclude from 1 and 2 that under the OP system it's even more important for a student to be in a good school and to choose good subjects (ie, to ensure a high-QCST-scoring peer group) than it is under any other system. Under the OP system, the effects of good teaching and hard work are diminished, whereas the effects of a good peer group are amplified. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.143.164.250 (talk) 06:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Subjective Assignment of SAIs
While I do not have a formal citation for subjective SAI placement and schools taking advantage of this I helped my parent, a deputy principal, do this with a spreadsheet provided by another schools deputy principal in 2000 and 2001. Having the details explained of how and why to do it. This method was adopted by the school after doing it how you are supposed to the first year they had year 12 students and achieving very poorly then after trying it the next year and getting very significantly better results, which equals better teachers, keeping smarter students for year 12, and better funding, all cycling back to give better results the following years, the practice has continued. --BeowulfNode 7 Oct 2011

others marks affect your op
It's not stated clearly, but other students in your school affect your final OP, whether up or down. How a system that does not base it's marks entirely and exactly on the merits and efforts, or lack therof, of individual students' work can be fair is beyone my comprehension.

Fairly, how can one persons A be worth more than anothers? Such is the way the OP system works. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.222.113.68 (talk) 08:23, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * - Article now makes clear OP's are initially drawn from SAI's, which are determined relative to others within the same subject in the same school, and which produce numerical figures which cannot be compared between schools or subjects. Euryalus (talk) 11:14, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Article Vandalism
There is a lot of vandalism in this article. It is semi-protected, so can someone please fix up the mess?203.94.61.143 (talk) 06:37, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

SAI is never expanded anywhere
I couldn't see any explanation of the acronym SAI — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.239.45.4 (talk) 20:54, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Subject Achievement Indicators. Added the acronym expansion to the article. Euryalus (talk) 11:37, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Recent edits
This article has been tagged as needing better references, lacking a neutral point of view and requiring a copyedit for up to 5 years. So - have made some changes which I wanted to briefly discuss.


 * First, I reordered the text to follow what seems to be a more logical order from SAI calculation through scaling to the awarding of OP's. Apologies if I have missed any key points in this process - the QSA materials can be a bit confusing. Corrections welcome, with due regard for neutral points of view, no original research and good sourcing.


 * Second, I removed the extended Criticism section and a few other smaller subheaders, and/or merged some of this material into the body of the article, because:
 * It was entirely unsourced and had been for years;
 * It was largely original research into the operation of SAI/OP calculations, and a series of personal opinions which in some cases verged on conspiracy; and
 * Parts of it were irrelevant to this article (for example, the duplicative dissertation on the problems of league tables).


 * And third, I've copyedited some of the text to simplify the language and keep it all in third person. Some small details on OP calculation were removed in this process, because in an article of this length they were of limited importance and more easily understood in context by reading the QSA materials linked as references.

There is still more work to do, especially in in-line citations from sources other than the QSA. And as always I am happy to discuss these changes - if there's disagreement let's determine a consensus here on this talk page. Euryalus (talk) 11:36, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't work:
The fact remains that no one, (probably not even QCAA themselves) know how the OP system works. The section of the article titled, "Assignment of OPs" needs revision. It has a conversational tone, it is not cited and from what I know about the importance of QCEs in OP subjects, incorrect.

This extract is particularly wrong:

"Although subjects are weighted equally, not all combinations of subjects will cover all the common curricular elements (CCEs, see Queensland Core Skills Test). As the QCS Test is based on these CCEs, students who do not cover all of them in their normal studies can be at a disadvantage to those who do."

What I know

 * 1) QCEs are tested in the QCS.
 * 2) No QCE is inherently more valuable than another; that is until QCS weighting.
 * 3) Different authority (OP) subjects cover different QCEs.
 * 4) QCEs that have fewer correct responses in the QCS are worth more credit.
 * 5) 'Stronger' subjects have students who perform higher in their subject's QCEs in the QCS.
 * 6) Therefore QCEs work positively towards subject strength:
 * When few students in the state get the correct response in the QCS.
 * When students give high standard responses in the QCS for their subject's tested QCEs.

Finally
Can we all remember not to put an apostrophe on the 's' for OPs? I'm not great with grammar either, but it's frustrating to see 'OP's' and it's also being used inconsistently throughout the article.

Polarbear ed (talk) 10:21, 2 October 2014 (UTC)polarbear_ed

(I'm new to Wikipedia, please help me if I'm not doing the right thing!)