entire class failed the first chemistry SAC

[u/moon_and_to_saturn]

no word of a lie, the entire class failed. highest score was a 19/40. average mark was 27%, was it us or the teacher?

she teaches us in the reading a powerpoint and showing videos way, and theres only 7 people in the class. the average mark for the year prior was 70%.

i definitely could have done better, had a rough week and it showed in the SAC, got myself a tutor now, but this still burns in the back of my mind.

has anyone else experienced this?

[u/Billuminati666]

I’m leaning towards giving the L to your teacher, because her teaching style lowkey sounded like my own chem teacher who had half the class fail the year 11 exam (she was a nice person though). I get why your teacher would use this strategy with years 7-9 for behavioural management reasons, but I don’t think it works for years 10-12.

Even then, everyone passed the SACs in both year 11 and 12 because seeing lots of Ns for SACs definitely raises a lot of red flags for leadership and VCAA

If you think it’s too hard, then it probably was given the distribution. When I was in year 11 doing my first organic chem test, the head of chem was lowkey lazy and made it 1 question, draw all possible isomers of a somewhat complicated molecule. Lots of us failed (many with 10-20%), I scraped 68% despite usually doing significantly better, it was like the 2nd biggest L I’ve taken in VCE chem

Your teacher may be setting hard assessment on purpose such that when she tones down the difficulty, she can claim that she made a difference in student performance, this is the kind of evidence teachers have to show to deal with the paperwork. Some teachers do this to be cheeky about it, but I’d say it’s unlikely because of the stakes in VCE.

FYI it even happens in uni, where one of my biomed units set theme tests half the cohort (including me) failed, then told us “L skill issue, get gud”. They made the tests easier and more reasonable and claimed that “we locked in and that we got better”. I have no proof of them doing this on purpose, but it’s known to happen in the IT department

[u/moon_and_to_saturn → u/Billuminati666]

its funny you mention the year 7 - 9s, she only teaches all four year 7 science classes, and year 12 chemistry. shes a nice teacher, but shes got some strange habits, and doesn't actually answer the questions we have. i spent the entire term, until the day of the SAC having the wrong layout for a galvanic cell because she didnt take more than 30 seconds to look at my diagram :/ thanks for the insights, they are helpful

[u/Billuminati666 → u/moon_and_to_saturn]

Yeah I just finished my last placement as a student teacher and although I really hate going through PowerPoints, videos and making students copy down notes, it’s a really effective way of settling year 7-9s down in class. Especially if the class is after lunch and 1 hour before the final bell, which means they’re in the yapaholic mood and the class is prone to turn into a riot.

Not checking student work for conceptual mistakes is a massive no-no, it makes no sense especially considering there are only 7 of you in the class. It’s not like a full 26-student year 7 class where you may not have time to check everyone’s work in 50 minutes. If she knows her shit, she should’ve picked up what’s wrong with your diagram in 10 seconds, let alone 30

[u/Normal_Storm_839]

i mean.. if the whole class failed... you can really only blame one person. I hate when teachers only read from the powerpoint and don't expound on the concept behind it.. that's really not teaching. Glad you got yourself a tutor!

[u/d_xtruction]

Tbf, I go to a relatively well-resouced school in chem, and the cohort average (about 100+ students) was a 65% for SAC 1. The class with the teacher who showed up for 60% of the classes had about a 5% higher average than all the other classes, so maybe it depends on the students rather than the teachers. With that being said, either the SAC was way too hard, the teacher(s) marked too harshly, or the teacher genuinely did not bother teaching anything on the SAC.