Economics - moderator's newsletter
December 2011
Contents
- Level 1 Assessment Resources – 90987 and 90984
- Sufficiency Statement
- Level 2 Internal Achievement Standards
- Level 2 Assessment Resources
- Unit Standards Heading changes
Level 1 Assessment Resources - 90987 and 90984
MoE assessment resources for AS90987 were updated in September, to more closely align with the intent of the standard and provide more evidence and clarification between Merit and Excellence in the assessment schedule. Access the updated resources on TKI Level One assessment resources.
The exemplars of student work and commentary for MoE assessment resource (1.5A) has been updated to more closely align with the standard and provide clearer evidence and guidance for teachers in relation to grade boundaries.
Additionally, there was a change made to the NZQA exemplar of student work and commentary for Low Excellence (MoE assessment resource 1.2A; AS 90984), to more closely align with the requirements of the standard and provide more evidence and clarification between the Low Excellence and High Merit grade boundaries.
Sufficiency Statement
The new level 1 MoE assessment resources include the following sufficiency statement on the assessment schedule:
Final grades will be decided using professional judgement based on a holistic examination of the evidence provided against the criteria in the Achievement Standard.
Moderation of the new standards has shown that some teachers are adding various numerical style sufficiency statements. These often fail to accurately reflect the criteria in the achievement standard. For guidance on what evidence to look for in student work when deciding if the work is at the Achieved, Merit or Excellence level of the achievement criteria, teachers should refer to the exemplars of student work and commentary on the grade boundaries provided on the NZQA website.
Level 2 Internal Achievement Standards
Final draft versions of Level 2 internal achievement standards are available on TKI. As there have been some changes to wording it is important to replace any earlier draft standards with the updated final draft standards.
AS91226 (2.5) changes
Extrapolating statistical data has been moved to Excellence; now making the student evidence requirements outlined in EN2 for Merit and Excellence more consistent with the rest of the Internals.
The addition of and/or to EN2 regarding economic concepts and models, will allow students more flexibility when explaining the relationships in statistical data and inter-relationships between two contemporary economic issues.
Level 2 Assessment Resources
All eight Ministry of Education (MoE) assessment resources have been updated to align with the changes to the standards and are now available on the TKI website. The resources have been NZQA approved TM so teachers can use them with confidence knowing that clear guidance is provided on what is necessary to include to meet the requirements of the standard and when creating original assessment tasks or modifying the context to make it relevant for students and help ensure student authenticity.
If teachers plan to modify the MoE assessment task then it is acceptable to use the assessment schedule provided with the MoE assessment resource as generic evidence and judgement statements. This should help ease some of the assessment workload associated with the new standards.
The Level 2 exemplars of student work and commentaries for all MoE assessment resources will be available on the NZQA Economics subject webpage in December.
Unit Standards heading changes
Changes have been made to the template for unit standards. The headings Elements and Performance Criteria have been replaced with Outcomes and Evidence Requirements. The Level 2 Economics unit standards are due to be reviewed and the new headings will be applied to the next version, which will expire at the end of 2012. In line with these changes, the external moderation reports completed for these standards will use this new language, making economics consistent with other secondary subjects that are also using unit standards now and in the future.