SM Analysis – HSC Advanced/Standard 2 common content

Hi XXXX,

We’ve been looking at the Advanced/Standard 2 common content recently and given ~25% of the allocated marks in these exams has been from common questions in the first two years, its importance in our view has grown.

In response to this we have created a couple of new features to make it easier to navigate and analyse this important area.

• Common content is now identified by a paperclip icon, similar to the syllabus icon that denotes the same thing (see below).

• Common questions in Advanced and Standard 2 exams can be identified by their own icon (see below).

Some other observations in our analysis that may be of interest:

• Advanced students have achieved a “weighted average” mean mark for common questions of 66%, compared to 34% for Standard 2 students.

• The range of mean mark differences on a per question analysis has had a high of 47% (87% vs 40% – algebraic fractions) to a low of 15% (96% vs 81% – graphing a linear function).

The topic areas that have attracted the largest mark allocations in the first two years of common exam content are:

• T1 Trig (Adv) – Non-RAT, Bearings and Circular Measure … 17 marks
• S2 Bivariate Data Analysis (Adv) … 9 marks
• S3 Normal Distribution (Adv) … 8 marks

To make a bold statement of the bleeding obvious, teaching and revision should reflect that the common topic areas are more likely to throw up particularly challenging questions for Standard 2 students going forward.

If you have read this far, we hope our analysis has been useful and the new common content/question icons prove beneficial to your teaching.

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Best regards,