On Sunday 11 June 2006, the WA Minister for Education and Premier have stated that the assessment of the CoS will be similar to what is done in NSW.

Here is the process in NSW: from http://www.uac.edu.au/mya/admin/uaitext.html

What is the UAI?

The Universities Admission Index (UAI) is a numerical measure of a student's overall academic achievement in the Higher School Certificate (HSC) in relation to that of other students. This measure allows the comparison of students who have completed different combinations of HSC courses. The UAI is calculated solely for use by institutions, either on its own or in conjunction with other selection criteria, to rank and select school leavers for admission. For information about UAI cut-offs refer to Australian secondary studies on this website.

Other criteria such as a portfolio, interview, audition, questionnaire or test may also be taken into account in conjunction with the UAI for certain courses. Details of any additional selection criteria are outlined in the course descriptions on this web site.

Calculation of the UAI is the responsibility of the Technical Committee on Scaling on behalf of the NSW Vice-Chancellors' Committee. Students who indicate on their HSC entry forms that they wish to be notified of their UAI will receive a UAI Advice Notice from UAC. UAIs are also made available to institutions for selection purposes. The UAI is reported as a number between 0.00 and 100 with increments of 0.05.

Specifically, a UAI indicates the position of a student relative to their Year 10 cohort. That is, a UAI of 80.00 indicates that students with that UAI have performed well enough in the HSC to place them 20 percent from the top of their Year 10 cohort, had all the Year 10 students completed Year 12 and been eligible for a UAI.

UAI courses

UAI courses are Board Developed courses for which there are formal examinations conducted by the Board of Studies that yield a graded assessment. These are the only courses that can be included in the UAI calculations.

Who receives a UAI?

While UAIs are calculated for all UAI-eligible students, only students who indicate on their HSC entry forms that they wish to be notified of their UAI receive a UAI Advice Notice from UAC. These students will receive their written Advice Notices at the same time as they receive their HSC results from the Board of Studies.

The UAI Advice notice includes:
-a student's UAI
-a list of the UAI courses which the student studied and the categorisation of each course, and
-the number of units of each UAI course that were actually included in the calculation of the UAI.

There are two cases where a UAI will not be shown on the UAI Advice Notice. The first is when a student receives a UAI between 0.00 and 30.00, in which case the UAI will be indicated as '30 or less'. The second is when the student has not met the requirements for a UAI, in which case the statement 'Not Eligible' will appear.

Eligibility for a UAI in 2006

Changes to UAI eligibility requirements for the 2006 HSC
To be eligible for a UAI a student must satisfactorily complete at least 10 units of UAI courses. These UAI courses must include at least:
1. eight units from Category A courses
2. two units of English
3. three Board Developed courses of two units or greater
4. four subjects.

Categorisation of UAI courses

UAI courses are assessed by formal examinations conducted by the Board and have sufficient academic rigour to be useful as preparation for university study.

UAI courses are classified as either Category A or Category B courses. The criteria for Category A courses are academic rigour, depth of knowledge, the degree to which the course contributes to assumed knowledge for tertiary studies, and the coherence with other courses included in the UAI calculations. Category B courses are those whose level of cognitive and performance demands are not regarded as satisfactory in themselves, but their contribution to a selection index is regarded as adequate if the other courses included in the aggregate are more academically demanding.

In 2006 the Category B courses are:

Accounting
Business Services Examination
Construction Examination
Entertainment Examination
Hospitality Operations Examination
Industrial Technology
Information Technology Examination
Metal and Engineering Examination
Primary Industries Examination
Retail Operations Examination
Tourism Examination

Calculation of the UAI

In 2006 your UAI will be based on an aggregate of scaled marks in 10 units of UAI courses comprising:
your best two units of English; and
your best eight units from the remaining units, which can include up to two units of Category B courses.
Marks to be included in the UAI calculations can be accumulated over a five-year period but if a course is repeated only the last satisfactory attempt is used in the calculation of the UAI.

For students accumulating courses towards their HSC, scaled marks are calculated the year the courses are completed. Marks are not re-scaled each year.

The UAI is a rank NOT a mark.

How is the UAI determined?

Institutions are concerned with ranking school-leaver applicants based on their overall academic achievement in the HSC. From their perspective, the importance of an HSC mark achieved in a course is that it conveys information about a student's position in relation to other students who undertook that particular course.

With the exception of English, which is compulsory, students are free to choose their courses of study. Consequently, individual course candidatures vary in size and nature, and there are many different enrolment patterns. In 2004 there were approximately 27 000 different enrolment patterns for UAI-eligible students. Only 215 of these 27 000 combinations were completed by 18 or more students and over 19 000 were taken by only one student.

Given the choice available, it follows that a student's ranking in a course will not necessarily have the same significance across different courses: the significance of the ranking will depend on the nature of the course candidature. Good rankings are more difficult to obtain when students are competing with students of high academic ability.

The scaling process takes raw marks provided by the Board of Studies and estimates what these marks would have been if all courses had been studied by all students. The scaling algorithm is designed to encourage students to take the courses for which they are best suited and which best prepare them for their future studies; the underlying principle is that a student should neither be advantaged nor disadvantaged by choosing one HSC course over another.

The scaling model assumes that a student's position in a course depends on the student's developed ability in that course and the 'strength of the competition'. Since the UAI is a rank that reflects academic achievement, 'strength of the competition' is defined in terms of the demonstrated overall academic attainment of the course candidature.

Scaling modifies the mean, the standard deviation and the maximum mark in each course. Adjustments are then made to the marks of individual students to produce scaled marks, which are the marks the students would have received if all courses had the same candidature. Although scaled marks are generally different from the raw marks from which they are derived, the ranking of students within a course is not changed.

Once the raw marks have been scaled, an aggregate is calculated for each UAI-eligible student. In most cases, the ranking or order of merit based on this aggregate is quite different from the order of merit using an aggregate based on the HSC marks that are reported to students.

Percentiles, which indicate the ranking of students with respect to other UAI-eligible students, are then determined on the basis of the aggregate of scaled marks.

The penultimate step is to determine what the percentiles would have been if all students in their Year 10 cohort completed Year 12 and were eligible for a UAI. The last step is to round these percentiles to the nearest 0.05. These are their UAIs.

Each UAI corresponds to a range of aggregates and the number of students with each UAI varies. Students who received a UAI of 100 in 2004, for example, had aggregates spread across the range 483.0 to 497.4.

The scaling process is carried out afresh each year. It does not assume that one course is intrinsically more difficult than another or that the quality of the course candidature is always the same. All students who complete at least one UAI course in a given year are included in the scaling process for that year. Students who are accumulating courses towards their HSC have their scaled marks calculated in the year the courses are completed. Marks are not re-scaled each year.

Further information about the UAI can be found in the 2005 UAI Preliminary Report and You and Your UAI. Both can be downloaded from this website. The Report of the Scaling of the 2005 NSW Higher School Certificate will be available on this website in May 2006.