All the controversies surrounding SACE exams from years gone by
As about 12,500 students start their year 12 SACE exams this week, we look back on all the times the final tests didn’t quite go to plan.
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With thousands of students about to start their SACE exams on Monday, year 12s will be nervous about getting questions right.
But the exams haven’t always gone to plan whether it’s issues with teacher walkouts, grammar apps or interruptions to the final test.
We take a look at all the times students had to fight extra pressures while sitting their final tests.
2023: Thousands of teachers walk off the job during SACE exams
Public school teachers marched through Adelaide’s CBD on November 9, during exam period, last year as they went on strike to demand better pay and conditions.
It was the second teacher strike in less than two months.
About 1000 public school students, undertaking the physics and accounting exams that day had to be reassured that testing would still take place at school.
At the time, a spokeswoman for the SACE Board said school leaders would “make sure exams can be delivered in a way that supports students”.
“During an examination, students must be supervised at all times and schools appoint exam invigilators for their school site,” the spokeswoman said.
“They are not required to be teachers.”
2022: Integrity of online SACE exams thrown into question after English students were officially allowed to use Grammarly
Following the testing period that year, it emerged a new computer program used for SACE exams enabled a commercial app, Grammarly, to be accessed during English Literary Studies exam.
Prior to this, access to external websites or apps was blocked by SACE, which updated its software for the 15 online year 12 exams.
English teachers took to social media forums to accuse the SACE Board of giving an unfair advantage to students with Grammarly installed on their devices over those without the software.
Contacted for comment, SACE acting chief executive Michaela Bensley confirmed markers had been told to take “additional consideration so that no student is advantaged or disadvantaged”.
In 2023, the SACE Board blocked apps such as Grammarly and ChatGPT for exams.
2021: Mass exodus of SACE Board staff sparks concerns of wrong or late grades
Year 12 students were at serious risk of being awarded “incorrect” grades or receiving results late because so many disgruntled SACE Board workers quit, staff claimed in October 2021.
More than 40 current and former staff signed a letter from the Public Service Association to then board chief executive Martin Westwell, raising “serious concerns” about “leadership and workplace culture”.
“This has led to high staff dissatisfaction and turnover and puts at risk the ability of the Board to ensure the integrity and timely delivery of SACE results this year,” the letter said.
It said 51 staff had quit within a year, with eight more to go at end of that year, equating to a turnover rate of more than 50 per cent.
Earlier in 2021, the public sector I Work For SA survey found 29 per cent of SACE Board staff thought recruitment and promotion decisions were fair – 21 per cent below the average for comparable small agencies.
Prof Westwell dismissed concerns over the exam and results period, saying there was “enough expertise and experience” to run it smoothly.
2020: Almost 3000 students had their final exam interrupted
Thousands of Year 12 students were left in distress when their Psychology exam being conducted electronically had to be abandoned because of a technical problem.
The exam, being taken by 2720 students, included a video clip in one of the questions, with that data file pinpointed as the source of the problem.
A St Peter’s Girls School student said “there were some tears” among her classmates as the exam crashed.
She battled “an hour and a half of errors (error messages) … going ‘retry’ and ‘try again’”.
“Teachers started running around asking IT for help,” said the student, who did not want to be named.
“One of the teachers came in near the end and said it’s cancelled. I was just kind of shocked.”
Then SACE Board chief executive Martin Westwell apologised for the failure.
The psychology exam was worth 30 per cent of students’ final grade.
Prof Westwell said it could not be rescheduled because students had seen the questions and they had focused for this point in time. Instead, a “derived” score would be created from the teacher’s prediction of how the student would perform – lodged two weeks earlier – and a statistical process applied by the SACE Board which considered all of the earlier work.
2019: Economics question wasn’t on the money
The SACE Board acknowledged there was a mistake in the Year 12 Economics exam paper after a student contacted The Advertiser.
The student said the way a question was posed was “contradictory”.
“It was a five-mark question from a total of a 65-mark exam,” the student said.
“Naturally, it really throws me off and a lot of others, I am sure. (It) was not a grammar error, it was written completely wrong.”
The student expressed surprise that the SACE Board had not taken action.
The Board said the “minor error” had been identified “prior to marking” and did not warrant contacting schools about, and that it had not received any complaints.
A spokesman said assessors had “adapted their marking guidelines to ensure that no student was disadvantaged”.
2019: What’s the formula for failure?
A maths exam sat by more than 3000 students contained a question with an incorrect formula.
The SACE Board said there had been “a minor error in a three-mark question in last Tuesday’s mathematical methods exam”.
“The error, which was an incorrect formula, will be resolved during the marking process by markers not counting the question, ensuring that no student is disadvantaged,” a spokesman said.
“Schools were notified.”
2019: SACE biased towards girls, boys schools claims
The SACE was biased against boys and must be reformed to produce more even results, elite private boys school Prince Alfred College claimed after commissioning research showing the huge results gap between the genders.
PAC said the focus on large numbers of assignments, many of them long essays, favoured the strengths of girls, while the decreasing emphasis on exams also disadvantaged boys.
“We do not believe boys are fundamentally less intelligent than girls and measures need to be taken to address this (inequity),” then principal Bradley Fenner said.
Then SACE Board chief executive Martin Westwell said girls generally outperformed boys around the world, with girls studying more productively and achieving “mastery” of subjects, while boys excelled at “cramming for exams”, especially if they required a lot of memorisation.
Mr Westwell said a range of assessment types were needed to form a “balanced judgment” of each student.
2017: English too hard? Then just scrap the requirement to read books
Students could pass the toughest Year 12 English course reading one novel and one play, it was revealed, sparking calls that it must be made more rigorous by requiring study of more long-form fiction.
Teachers said the then-new SACE English Literary Studies course, a revamp of the former English Studies subject, has reduced the number of major “texts” students have to study from seven to five. Up to two of those can be movies, and a selection of poetry counts as another.
The SA English Teachers Association backs the changes, saying they allowed for more in-depth study of each text with “far greater academic rigour”.
But university experts warned the curriculum was not comprehensive enough, especially when young people read far less of their own volition compared to previous generations.
The SACE Board said it worked with school teachers and university experts to produce the new subject content, which was further refined after public consultation.
“While the reading requirements are similar, the new subject asks for higher-order thinking that better prepares students for life in our complex world,” then chief executive Neil McGoran said.
2017: Hoax letter tells students they’ll have to resit their exam
A hoax letter on Facebook suggested thousands of Year 12 Biology students would have to resit their exam.
The letter, using SACE Board letterhead, claimed there was a “significant breach in the integrity” of the exam sat by 3645 students.
It claimed the Board was “not at liberty to divulge the exact nature of the breach” but it involved a significant number of students being “unfairly advantaged”.
The Board identified the student responsible for the prank.
“The SACE Board would like to reassure students that this letter was a hoax and there was no breach, and so no student will need to resit this examination,” it said.
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