Calibration
How scores work here
Published, because a score you cannot interrogate is a score you should not trust.
What a mark on this platform is
The number of marks your child earned on this paper, out of the marks available. That is all it is. It is not scaled against other children, because we do not have the cohort that would make scaling meaningful, and inventing one would make every number on the page a fiction.
Why there is no percentile
A percentile needs a comparison group. The only group we have is the families using this platform, which is not the group your child competes against and is not a random sample of anything. So we do not show one, anywhere: not a percentile, not a rank, and not a score that compares your child with anybody else's. What every number on a report is about is the paper your child sat and what they did on it.
How a test's difficulty is set
Every question carries a target difficulty band, set when it is written from a published rubric — how many steps the solution takes, how big the numbers are, how much of the question is a distraction, how hard the wording is — and checked by a tool that recomputes the band from those same properties and rejects the question when the two disagree. Tests are assembled to a fixed blueprint, so two tests in the same band are comparable by construction. What that band is not, yet, is measured. No child has sat these papers, so no question on this platform has a p-value or a discrimination index behind it, and every band you see is an authored judgement checked by a rule rather than an observed fact. As soon as real responses exist, the measured difficulty is computed and published beside the authored one, and where they disagree the evidence wins and the question is re-banded. We would rather tell you that than let you assume a number has children behind it when it does not.
Why the trend line is adjusted
The tests get harder as the library goes on. An unadjusted score line would therefore show every child getting worse, which would be false. The trend adjusts for the band of each paper, and where the adjustment is doing a lot of work the report tells you.
What we do not know
We cannot tell you how your child compares with the national cohort, what mark the real test would give them, or whether they will be offered a place. Nobody can, including the people who say they can — the Department publishes no score and no rank, and does not provide one on appeal.
Independent, unofficial and non-government
Exam Warriors is an independent practice platform. Practice tests on Exam Warriors are created by Exam Warriors and should be considered unofficial and non-government. The Opportunity Class Placement Test is administered by the NSW Department of Education. Exam Warriors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NSW Department of Education, Janison or Cambridge University Press & Assessment.