Support
Creating new benchmarks
Once you have enabled a test and set the primary score type, you are ready to setup the tests benchmarks. Click on the second tab labelled “Create Benchmarks”, this will bring you to Scaffold Benchmarks wizard.
The first step is to pick the Year Levels you want to create a benchmark for. You may want to do all year levels from Reception – Year 7, then you would click on each year level required making their colour green indicating that the system is ready to create that year level for you. If you wanted just the one benchmark for all students you would click on the All Year Levels button which will remove any other year levels highlighted as this benchmark is suitable to be used for all year levels (for tests such as SA Spelling where the primary score type is Ability Offset (Months).
Once you have selected the applicable year levels you can click on the next button to go to the next step in the Wizard. Please note if there are already benchmarks setup for the year levels you have selected, the next button will change to a warning button indicating that Benchmarks for this year level have already been created and if you continue they will be replaced, so it is important to be sure you want to create new benchmarks instead of just editing the existing ones.
Now that you have selected the year levels that require benchmarks and have clicked next you need to select the Frequency. You need to select based upon your schools expectations, For example, many schools test Running Records each term of the year; however if your school only sets expectations on a year-level basis then you may only need one benchmark.
Benchmarks in Scorelink can be adjusted at any time and the data will automatically update, so start with something simple that you can understand, and you can always change it once you are more experienced with Scorelink.
If you believe however that your students benchmark should be at a higher level in the second half of the year compared to the first, then you would select Semester 1 and Semester 2, the system will then create two benchmarks for you to populate instead of one for the whole year.
The final step is to click Save to save the benchmarks you have just created.
Note: the benchmarks have now been created but are yet to be configured. They should not be used to colour-code data until the configuration has been completed. If you would like more information please read the Guides: Understanding Benchmarks – The Mechanics and Setting up Benchmarks