The Gate

Gate questions

Q1 · Choosing a benchmark

Wagga Wagga’s operating cost per loan is $10.50; Cessnock’s is $14.51. A classmate says: “Cessnock costs $4.01 more per loan than Wagga Wagga, so Cessnock is less efficient.” What would have to be true for this conclusion to hold? Write one condition you would check first.

Your answer

Show pass-type answer

Both figures are calculated the same way (operating expenditure from the same year, the same definition of loans); or the two councils are comparable in scale and service model. Either way, the answer checks comparability before comparing the two figures.

Q2 · Explaining an anomaly

Of the 15 comparable councils in this band, Cessnock and Shoalhaven both report young-adult = 0, yet each reports more than three thousand junior members. Maitland, similar in size, reports 1,410 young-adult members. Give two possible explanations, and say which is more likely and why.

Your answer

Show pass-type answer

(1) The software files young adults under another category — a recording or configuration problem. (2) Young people in these areas really do almost no library use — a behavioural explanation. (1) is more likely: the zero appears in more than one council, junior figures are healthy, and a council of similar size (Maitland) reports a non-zero figure, so the pattern points to category configuration, not behaviour.

Week 7 tracks

Track	Your two answers	Your Week 7 kit
Independent	Both check a premise or explain a mechanism. A rough answer of the right kind is enough.	The rubric and the data. You draft every paragraph independently.
Scaffolded	Either takes the number straight off the table as the conclusion, e.g. “because $14.51 > $10.50” or “because young people don’t read”.	One guiding question per paragraph, plus optional sentence frames. You can re-sit the Gate mid-Week 7.

For teachers

Open questions show whether students use the checking move unprompted.
Routing sets the Week 7 pack only; it is not recorded or marked.
Support fades when a student passes the gate, whatever the week.

Continue to Week 7