Administering diploma exams

General Information Bulletin and schedule

The General Information Bulletin contains specific directives, guidelines and procedures of the Diploma Examination Program.

• 2024-25 diploma exams schedules
• Significant dates at a glance
• 2024-25 Calculator Information and Rules for Mathematics and Science Diploma Exams
• Using Technology to Administer Provincial Achievement Tests and Diploma Exams
• Provincial Assessment Directive
• August 2024 Provincial Writing Centres

Digital tests and exams

Alberta Education is transitioning to a new digital platform for provincial student assessments, meaning that eventually students will write diploma exams and provincial achievement tests in a digital environment rather than pencil and paper.

The transition to digital assessments will be done in an incremental and measured way to allow school authorities, administrators, teachers, and students time to learn and interact with the new platform. 

Information for teachers, parents and students

For the 2024-25 school year, Alberta Education is in touch with school authorities directly to offer them opportunities to participate in a variety of optional implementation activities. Teachers, parents and students can navigate the assessment platform and access practice exams and resources. Questions and feedback may be directed to [email protected]. If you have questions about whether your school will be administering digital assessments this school year, please contact your school principal.

Information for school principals

Principals can contact the [email protected] to request access for their school so they can set up their account and add other administrators and teachers. Once teachers have been added and set up their account, they can administer practice written response assignments. Instructions on using the system can be found in this user guide.

Provincial Standards

Consistent standards

Government's goal is to ensure fairness for all students, no matter when they write a diploma exam.

We use a process called 'equating' to maintain consistent standards and help make the exams as fair as possible.

By maintaining consistent standards through equating, government can more accurately report changes in student diploma exam results from one exam to the next, and from one year to the next. This also makes it possible to more accurately report how students performed, no matter which exam they wrote.

This practice started in 2003 for the diploma exam program, and it is currently used on almost all diploma exams. Similar approaches for maintaining consistent standards are used in the Provincial Achievement Testing Program (PATs) as well as in many national and international tests.

Anchor items

Anchor items are questions that appear in more than one diploma exam. They are a mini-version of the exam and they represent the whole program of studies for the subject.

By making at least 20% of questions on an exam the same as those on a previous exam, we can determine if the student population writing one exam differs in achievement from the student population writing another exam.

These anchor items can also be used to determine if one exam is harder or easier compared to another exam. This process then lets government remove the variation in student scores caused by differences in difficulty from one exam to the next. In other words, a mark of 80% on one diploma exam means the same as a mark of 80% on another diploma exam in the same subject.

How equating works

Equating – step 1

Student performance on the anchor items is compared between 2 diploma exams. Since the anchor items are identical between 2 diploma exams, differences in performance tells us whether the current group of students is, on average, stronger, weaker or the same as the previous group, in terms of their abilities.

Equating – step 2

Based on what is found from step 1, student performance on the unique (non-anchor) items is compared between the 2 exams. In this way the relative difficulties of the 2 exams are compared.

For example, if the average student performance for the current group is close to the previous group on anchor items but the current group's performance is lower on the unique items, we would know that, while the 2 groups have similar abilities, the unique items are more difficult for the current group.

Equating – step 3

Based on the comparisons in steps 1 and 2, a statistical method called equating is used to adjust the student's results so that the variation in difficulty among exams does not affect their exam mark.

Adjustments to a student's score may be up or down, depending on the relative difficulty of the exam. The degree of adjustment for each score point also varies.

The equating process is designed to remove the variation in exam difficulty as a variable when assessing a student's knowledge and ability. This process is meant to ensure fairness for all students, over time.

This effort to ensure fairness for students means that not all diploma exam questions can be released to the public immediately after the exam. This is to ensure students do not see anchor questions prior to writing an exam, potentially gaining an advantage over other students.

We release as many diploma exam questions as possible online each year.

Comparing results over time

Diploma exams are designed to match a program of studies for a particular subject, and this design does not change until the program of studies is changed. Once the examinations from all administrations in a given school year are equated, results on the multiyear reports will be directly comparable over time.

If the program of study is substantially changed, a new exam will be developed. Provincial standards will be reset and confirmed by a standard-setting committee of about 20 teachers selected from across the province.

This process may be done multiple times in the first few years until the new exam stabilizes. During that period of time, any direct comparison of student scores from administration to administration should not be done, and trend analysis is not appropriate and valid.

School-awarded marks and diploma exam marks

School-awarded marks and diploma examination marks complement each other.

We design diploma exams to assess student achievement of the objectives of the curriculum. Diploma exams have some key benefits. Most importantly, they are consistent, providing an assessment standard that stays the same over time and across the province.

What diploma exams measure may not be the same in scope as what teachers measure. Some learning outcomes cannot be measured well by these timed tests. Teachers work closely with students on a daily basis, and use many different kinds of assessments, which can assess a broader range of students’ knowledge and skills.

Diploma exam marks and school-awarded marks should reflect the same standard, however, because both assess students based on the same program of studies (curriculum). Alberta Education works with teachers to set and maintain the standards of achievement for diploma exams.

To assist students, teachers, and parents in understanding what the provincial standards for each diploma exam are, Alberta Education has published Information Bulletins for each subject.

Contact

Connect with Diploma Exam Program
Hours: 8:15 am to 4:30 pm (open Monday to Friday, closed statutory holidays)

For Diploma Exam format, content, confirming standards, marking and results reporting, contact:

Email: [email protected]

For Diploma Exam security, rules, schedule and policy issues, contact:

Email: [email protected]