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52 stories
Week 47: Team effort: The International Schools’ Assessment
A large ACER assessment program assists international schools in improving outcomes for all learners.
More than 58 000 students from close to 300 schools across the globe participated in the most recent International Schools' Assessment (ISA). Why? To assess their students’ progress in reading, mathematics and writing, individually and by class or other groupings over time. And because the ISA is modelled on the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), they’re also able to compare their students’ performance against international standards.
As Assessment Services’ Senior Project Officer Michelle Chung explains, ‘The ISA provides a series of reports with information at the level of individual students, classes and schools as well as sub-groups identified by, say, gender or language background, alongside like-schools comparisons, international normative information and information about growth over time.
Administering an international test across time zones is a major logistical exercise, explains ACER’s Manager of Project Services Jim Carrigan. ‘The total sheets of paper scanned for a cycle of ISA if laid end to end would stretch half way from Melbourne to Sydney,’ Jim says, ‘but that’s actually the easy part. Being able to account with 100 per cent accuracy for every item of candidate data on every page – and find it at a moment’s notice – is where the real work is focused.’
As ACER’s Coordinator of Marking Operations Christine Lennie explains, ‘Good team work, careful organisation, meticulous record keeping, support and encouragement are fundamental to maintaining the smooth running of ISA marking. We have 132 ISA markers working from 7.30am to 6.30pm alongside ACER markers for other projects. To accommodate the growth, we now have two marking centres, which is especially important when we’re marking both the ISA and literally thousands of scholarship assessments.’
‘Pre-planning is the key,’ Michelle adds. ‘I prepare a marking schedule months in advance. To develop the marking schedule and allocate tasks I liaise with Project Directors Dara Ramalingam and Glenda Robertson; with test developers in Assessment and Reporting, and the staff in Psychometrics and Methodology; with Christine, Project Services’ Scanning and Marking Systems Administrator Rob Jinks and the Project Services team; and with Senior Software Engineer Phooi Lai Chan and the team in Information Technology.
‘The ISA helps educators around the world to monitor and improve educational outcomes, and doing that is a huge team effort.’
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Week 52: State of the art psychometric and statistical analysis
Week 51: Assessing civics and citizenship
Week 50: International research into teaching and learning
GOAL 1
Learners and their needs
every learner engaged in challenging learning opportunities appropriate to their readiness and needs
GOAL 2
The Learning Profession
every learning professional highly skilled, knowledgeable and engaged in excellent practice
GOAL 3
Places of learning
every learning community well resourced and passionately committed to improving outcomes for all learners
GOAL 4
A Learning Society
a society in which every learner experiences success and has an opportunity to achieve their potential
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Pursuing Quality and Equity through Evidence
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