School Assessment: Building and Submitting Your Folio
How school assessment works
In SACE Stage 2 Information Processing and Publishing, school assessment is the set of tasks your teacher designs, marks and moderates against the performance standards. It typically includes skills tasks (using software to produce information products or publish them) and an investigation or folio component. Your teacher grades each task against the assessment design criteria, and a sample of work is later moderated externally to confirm the school's judgements.
Concepts you must understand
Know the difference between formative work (practice, feedback, no grade) and summative tasks (graded, counted). Understand the assessment design criteria your subject uses, commonly around knowledge and understanding, and skills in planning, producing and evaluating information products. Learn how evidence is judged: a task asks for a process (planning documents, drafts, records of feedback) as well as a product. Know what an information product is (a document, website, database, publication) and what makes it fit for audience and purpose.
Traps in questions
- Confusing the product with the process: strong products without planning evidence lose marks.
- Ignoring the specified audience or purpose when justifying design choices.
- Treating teacher feedback as optional; acting on feedback is often assessed.
- Describing software steps without explaining why the choice suits the purpose.
- Missing deadlines or file-naming conventions, which can mean work is not accepted.
Worked example / rule of thumb
Rule of thumb: claim, evidence, evaluation. For every design decision, state the choice, point to the evidence (draft, test, feedback) and evaluate whether it met the audience's needs. Example: "I used a two-column layout with large headings because the audience is older readers; a peer test showed faster location of key facts, so I kept it."