Australian primary and secondary schools are currently migrating to a common reporting and assessment format. Education is the responsibility of the states in Australia , except at the tertiary level. In 2005 the Federal Government introduced a universal common assessment and reporting standards legislation that all states had to adhere to. The grading system is now structured as follows, though the percentages are only an approximate guide:
Most Australian tertiary institutions use close variations of the following grading structure:
Note that the numbers above do not correspond to a percentile, but are notionally a percentage of the maximum raw marks available. Various tertiary institutions in Australia have policies on the allocations for each grade and scaling may occur to meet these policies. These policies may vary also according to the degree year (higher percentages for later years), but generally, only 2~5% of students who pass (i.e. those with raw marks 50 or more) may be awarded a "High Distinction" grade, and 50% or more of passing students are awarded a basic "Pass" grade. Raw marks for students who fail are not scaled and do not increase the allocations of higher grades.
For example, the University of Sydney uses the following policy(section 3.2.2):
Above is the official policy, which may be alternatively stated by percentile as follows:
Many courses also have Non-Graded Pass (NGP) and Non-Graded Fail (F), where it is considered more appropriate to have qualitative than quantitative assessment.
Grade point averages are not generally used in Australia below a tertiary level. They are calculated according to more complicated formula than some other nations:
Grade Point Average (GPA) = Sum of (grade points × course unit values) / total number of credit points attempted
Where grade points are as follows:
Where a course result is a Non-Graded Pass, the result will only be included if the GPA is less than 4, and will be assigned the grade point of 4, otherwise NGP results will be disregarded.
The term course unit values is used to distinguish between courses which have different weightings e.g. between a full year course and a single semester course.
Other systems are used at other institutions. The University of Western Australia uses the same formula as above, but the following weightings:
Where a conceded pass is a pass for a course that has been awarded only after supplementary assessment has been undertaken by the student.
Monash University uses the following unit scores:
Charles Sturt University on the other hand uses the following weightings:
Some universities, such as the Australian National University , do not use GPAs even though they award a similar set of grades (P,C,D,HD).
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Academic grading in Australia.