School-based assessment tasks are developed by teachers and are required to meet the requirements of the syllabus for the course. These tasks are conducted by teachers in accordance with the school’s senior secondary assessment policy. The Authority provides advice to assist schools in developing and/or reviewing their policy. See Section 2.3.1 of the WACE Manual.

At the end of a unit or pair of units, aggregate marks are used to produce a rank list of the students. The teacher uses the grade descriptions for the course/stage to assign a grade (A, B, C, D or E) to each student. Each course page provides the grade descriptions and annotated student work samples under the grading heading.

The Authority also provides seminars/workshops to assist teachers.

Year 12 students studying a Year 12 pair of ATAR course units and who sit the ATAR course examination will also receive a school mark out of 100 for each unit. For courses with a practical (oral/interview, performance, production or portfolio) examination in addition to a school mark out of 100, schools are required to provide a mark out of 100 for the written component and a mark out of 100 for the practical component.

Details about school-based assessment students in Year 11 and Year 12 are provided in Section 2 of the WACE Manual.

Authority moderation process

The Authority uses several methods to moderate school-based assessments to provide comparability between schools. Details of these methods are provided on the moderation page of the website and in Section 3 of the WACE Manual.

Where the number of WACE examination candidates in an ATAR course examination group at a school is fewer than six, the school is required to form a partnership with another school/s. Information about this requirement is provided on the small group moderation page of the website and in Section 3.6 of the WACE Manual.