23 October 2009 The Board of Studies is aware of the concerns some students have about their ability to answer Section 3 of the Studies of Religion exam on Thursday. While replies are being sent to people who have already written, we want to reassure students by providing answers to the most common questions asked in the past day. Was Section 3 based on the syllabus? Yes. All five question options were based on the Studies of Religion syllabus and you can now read the mapping grid of 2009 exam questions to syllabus areas. Was I supposed to have studied those quotes? No. The quotations used in the questions seem to have thrown some students - they were intended as a prompt or 'stepping stone' into the answer, and students will not be expected to have studied the quotations themselves. What happens next? In the next few days the senior Studies of Religion I and II markers will be looking at the responses to this section, as they do for every part of the exam, to see if there is an unusual performance appearing among student answers. If it appears the section caused more difficulty this year, the NSW HSC standards based system will take that into account in marking. What's your advice to students who were upset by the exam? With the early start to exams this year, many students have had a long week of several major exams. Even if you have an exam on Monday you should try to get some rest over the weekend. Look forward and focus your exam thoughts on the ones yet to come, not the ones you will never do again. And remember, 50 per cent of your HSC marks for this course have already been completed in your school based assessment. Will we have to re-sit the exam? No. If the exam responses show there was an unexpected challenge in the paper this year, the marking process is designed to handle it. In addition, while some students are undoubtedly worried about Section 3, there are many others among the 14,000 in the course who reported no problems or welcomed the questions. Why weren't the Section 3 questions the same as last year? It is not unusual for Exam Committees to slightly vary parts of a paper, particularly if they have used a similar pattern over several years. In the past few years, the Studies of Religion Exam Committee has set questions based on sections of the Depth Study, but students still are required to learn about all sections of the Depth Study. The questions this year allowed students to bring that knowledge together into an overview response. Last year's Notes from the Marking Centre for Studies of Religion stated "...teachers and candidates should be aware that examiners may ask questions requiring an integration of the knowledge and skills gained through the study of the course". Students, teachers and parents with further questions can use the email address service@bos.nsw.edu.au Read more about How Your HSC Works.