SACE Stage 2 Industry Connections cheat sheet

School assessment in Industry Connections is school-based and typically contributes 70% of the subject grade, with the external component contributing 30%; confirm the current weightings in the subject outline before relying on them.

Evidence for school assessment is generated through the industry connection itself: a negotiated project, placement, or investigation with an external organisation, mentor, or community partner.

Assessment tasks must be designed against the subject's performance standards, which describe quality of evidence rather than content coverage; each task should map to specific standards.

The folio or project record is a cumulative body of evidence; it is assessed on demonstrated capability, not on hours logged or volume of pages produced.

A negotiated assessment plan should specify task type, evidence to be submitted, due date, and the performance standards addressed, and should be agreed before work begins.

Where a student works with an external partner, the school retains responsibility for assessment; partner feedback can inform evidence but cannot replace teacher judgement against the standards.

Drafting and feedback cycles are permitted within school assessment provided the final submission is the student's own work and the nature of any feedback is recorded.

Moderation processes within the school and across schools ensure comparability; a grade is only final after the school's moderation and, where applicable, external moderation of the sample.

External assessment is set and marked outside the school, typically through a reflective or evaluative response drawing on the student's industry connection experience.

The external component commonly requires students to evaluate their project or placement against intended outcomes, not merely describe what happened.

Responses must be prepared under the conditions specified in the subject outline (for example supervised, word-limited, or submitted as a folio), which govern what materials may be used.

Assessment criteria for the external task are drawn from the same performance standards as school assessment, so evidence of capability transfers across both components.

Referencing of sources, partner organisations, and any data collected must follow the citation conventions required by the subject outline; unacknowledged use of others' work is treated as plagiarism.

Confidentiality obligations to an industry partner may limit what can be disclosed; students must describe processes and learning without revealing commercially sensitive information.

Word or time limits are maximums and are enforced; material beyond the limit is not assessed, so planning must allocate words to evaluation and reflection rather than description.

Results from external and school assessment are combined according to the published weightings to produce the final subject grade; no single component alone determines the grade.