ACS and Markbooks 

ACS---ACT Certification System URL: acs.bsss.act.edu.au

ACS holds the following information for all ACT Senior Secondary Students:  

• Student data

• Course and Unit studied data

• Students' transcripts

• Markbook data

• Units

• Assessment Instrument results

• VET by school-based RTOs data

• Moderation data

• Scaling groups data

ACS markbooks are where all assessment data is stored for your students. Your Faculty Leader or an appointed colleague will set up markbooks for your faculty. You will need to ensure the Assessment Task Names and Weightings in the mark book and the Unit Outline are aligned from the start of the semester. 

Once student assessment tasks have been marked and graded, marks and grades should be entered into markbooks. Remember to save as you go; ACS does not have an automatic save function and the screen will time-out without saving input if you leave it for a while.  After internal moderation, ensure that the marks and grades in the markbook are consistent with the work returned to students. You can use the 'grade cut offs' feature on assessment tasks to make grade setting more efficient. Your faculty will have a moderation and/or meshing plan which will determine how you go about scoring in grading in your setting, so find out what it is. 

Markbooks are needed for ALL A, T & M units. R units are also recorded in an ACS mark book with a pass/ fail grade option. 

T markbooks are divided into year eleven and year twelve mark books. For students in abridged programs, your executive teacher will provide guidance about markbooks. Markbook composition is largely a school decision. 

Markbooks can have more than one unit or course or framework areas included in it, but everything in the same markbook must have same assessment item names, weights, and marks/scores: they must be directly comparable. You will have to work with those teachers in setting tasks, moderation work and making judgements about grades and scores, even if that requires coming to an understanding of those courses' achievement standards and curriculum. 

For example, all performing arts units (Music, Drama and Dance) might be in the same markbook this means that the first assessment has to be the same for all:

• Essay worth 30% 

• Practical Task worth 30% 

• Process Diary worth 40% 

Now although each unit will have a task specific to their subject area, the Title, Weighting and Marks and cognitive expectations need to be the same.

For example, a small school may have Advanced French, EAL, English, Literature and Modern History together in a markbook. Similar to above, the assessment must be consistent and comparable:

• Research task (20%)

• Interview Task (30%)

• Exam (50%) (Must be out of the same number of marks, e.g. 100%, 48/48)

Need to know concepts:

• Notional zero

  • • Where students hand in an assessment more than seven days late, or fail to hand in an assessment item, they will be awarded a notional zero for that assessment item. The notional zero will be a score which lies between 0.1 of a standard deviation below the lowest genuine score for that item and zero. 

Scores in the mark book may also be adjusted in ACS according to the following categories:

• • • Not submitted

    • Late

    • Insubstantial Attempt

    • Breach of academic integrity

    • Estimates

    • Comment

Your faculty leader will calculate estimates not you, you will only note the need for an estimate in Comments if the student has been given that special provision for that task. It is also good and collegial practice to note in the comments section if a student on special provisions will be handing in a task much later than the other the students. Try not to have blanks in the mark book for your class, you can always remove a non-submit or comment if the student finally submits the work. 

Notice the three areas highlighted in green. BEFORE you start putting in data for assessment results, make sure the Maximum Mark is changed to the actual maximum mark for the assessment. In large mark books, your executive teacher may prefer to do this, or a nominal 100 is used and all scores converted to a mark out of 100. Find out how it is done in your faculty. 

To see all classes data press the Expand All Button. 

Once all marks, grades and adjustments have been entered for an assessment, be sure to press to AI Published (Assessment Item Published) button to allow students access to their results online. The turn around time for this should be 3 weeks from the due date of the assessment task. 

ACS has been used for a long time, but we are continually updating features when resources are available.  Certification Officers are made aware of all ACS changes and will communicate those to you as needed. 

Here is a guide to using ACS Markbooks.  

As a reminder from Workshop One: 

Every assessment item requires both a grade and a score in all units.  The grade and score recorded on in the ACS Markbook must match the grade and score students receive on their returned assessment task. Any moderating or meshing that needs to be done at the assessment level must be completed before students receive their results. 

Assessment tasks need to be returned to students within a timely manner so that they can digest their feedback and use that for their work on future assessment tasks. The BSSS recommends assessments tasks be given back to students within a maximum of 3 weeks of submission date and that assessment tasks timelines allow for students to receive their feedback BEFORE the next assessment task is due. Students must have the original, or copy, or access to a version of their work with the feedback.