Susie O’Brien: Victoria’s students can’t have faith in compromised VCE exams

The latest VCE exams fiasco has surely left Victoria’s students and teachers with little faith in the compromised testing process and the body running it.

It’s hard to fathom the extent and impact of the latest VCE exam bungle.

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) CEO Kylie White may try and spin it away by telling students to “focus on their exams” but we now know actual questions, case studies and prompt materials for dozens of subjects were freely accessible to students before the exams.

Those in the know cut and pasted the hidden data from exam information booklets known as cover sheets, sharing their resourceful hack with thousands of others on online chat sites such as reddit and Facebook.

Even when the VCAA found out what had happened and changed the cover sheets, they didn’t change most of the exams, merely tweaking the compromised questions and case studies by turning “Luke” into “Leo” or changing a gym into a rock-climbing centre.

It’s foolish and arrogantly inadequate for the head of the VCAA to patronise students by telling them there’s nothing to worry about.

This is a massive failure within VCAA and deserves to be independently investigated.

Students also deserve to hear from Education Minister Ben Carroll today to learn what action he is going to take.

What hope or confidence can students have if the VCAA continues to tell them there’s no issue?

The students themselves are smart enough to know that some of their peers accessed questions and case studies that ended up just about word for word in the actual exam.

Ms White is wrong to say this doesn’t give them an advantage – students know that it does. Of course it does. How could it not?

In coming days, more exam materials will surface, and it’s expected that the list of compromised subjects will grow.

Already there are questions being asked about the integrity of subjects such as Environmental Science, VET Information and Communications Technology, Health and Human Development and Psychology.

At this point I really feel for the state’s 90,000 VCE students, especially those who are yet to finish exams.

They deserve better than this from the body charged with running the exams they have worked so hard for.

It’s also devastating for their teachers, who go above and beyond every single day.