Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll takes accountability for bungled VCE exams

Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll has said there will be a “full independent root-and-branch review” into the VCE exam blunder after he came under fire when conceding he knew about the debacle a month ago.

• O’Brien: Students can’t have faith in compromised exams

Education Minister Ben Carroll has taken accountability for the year 12 VCE exam blunder, which saw thousands of VCE students gain access to cheat sheets containing almost identical questions and case studies to those in their final exams.

The deputy premier acknowledged that his role as Education Minister made him accountable and reassured he would get to the bottom of what led to the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment (VCAA) authority exam debacle through a “full independent root-and-branch review”.

It comes after Mr Carroll was forced to concede he knew about the issue a month ago, but only got a “high-level” briefing on Wednesday night.

“I had been asking question after question, ‘are we right, we can’t have mistakes’,” he said

“I had been given all the reassurances that things were fine. I had been informed there’d been one production error that had been dealt with and fixed.”

Mr Carroll told ABC Melbourne Mornings host Raf Epstein he was under the impression there were no issues or mistakes with the written exams, with the only issue occurring in the production of the exam cover sheets.

Deputy premier Ben Carroll has taken accountability for the VCAA blunder.

“I had been informed there had been an error with the production and the questions had been rewritten and everything was going to be as per process (under) the Bennett review,” he said.

“But what has occurred is not acceptable. Students deserve better — this is their AFL Grand Final these VCE exams.”

Mr Carroll also shifted his focus to next year’s exams, suggesting that after the “root-and-branch review” was conducted, the VCAA could look different.

“I’m not happy with what’s occurred (which) is why I am now issuing a full board, independent root-and-branch review of that organisation,” he said.

“The new CEO has been turning this around in the past 12 months but what this shows me is there’s a lot of work to be done.

“We’ll still have the VCAA but there will be changes.”

Mr Carroll said a “ full independent monitor” would also be recruited to oversee the year 12 exams in 2025.

The government’s announcement comes as the Victorian opposition called for state Ombudsman Marlo Baragwanath to investigate the “significant” error, on Thursday night.

Meanwhile, three of the exams — art making and exhibiting, VET integrated technologies and global politics — which had hidden information available on the cover sheets, will be sat by more than 3000 students on Friday.

Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll knew about the blunder a month ago. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Premier Jacinta Allan was drawn into the debacle, saying she was “disappointed”.

“This is really frustrating for those parents and teachers and students … I certainly share concerns that parents and families have ­expressed off the back of those reports,” she said.

Mr Carroll spent Thursday in crisis talks with education bureaucrats over the blunder, revealed by the Herald Sun.

Early on Thursday, Mr Carroll said: “There has been human error here. It is still not acceptable human error, and I will get to the bottom of this.”

He admitted he only ­received a briefing in a “high level of detail” on Wednesday night – after the Herald Sun ­revealed the blunder – even though he conceded he was “alerted to the production issue about two weeks ago”.

But there was a discrepancy in his statements, as he also said he had “given strong instructions to the VCAA to rewrite all of the exam questions to make sure no student was given an unfair advantage”.

The exams had ­ already been finalised two weeks earlier and it was too late to rewrite them because they were delivered to schools, in two consignments on October 21 and November 1.

Mr Carroll’s office clarified later on Thursday that “two weeks” referred to the start of exams, October 29.

But late on Thursday night it again changed the date – to October 14.

This was nearly a month before he received an in-depth briefing on the matter.

The VCAA was aware of the embedded material on the cover sheets as far back as October 10, and sent a notice to schools telling them new cover sheets had been issued.

A veteran year 12 teacher said: “Why wasn’t the Minister notified back then?”

Opposition education spokeswoman Jess Wilson said: “The response by the VCAA and Minister for Education to the latest VCE examination debacle has been entirely inadequate.

“After three consecutive years of errors, blunders and compromised assessments, a comprehensive and independent investigation into the VCAA and VCE process must occur.

“The Victorian Liberals and Nationals will move a motion in parliament to refer the VCAA to the Ombudsman to investigate how this latest blunder occurred and what needs to be done to restore integrity to VCE assessments and ensure no student is put at a disadvantage in the future.”

On Thursday the magnitude of the debacle grew with the revelation that half of the marks in the Business Management exam were accessible by students on the information booklet available online.

This included the case study and question one in Section A (15 marks) and the barely altered section B case study (25 marks). This means 40 out of 75 marks have been compromised in an exam done by at least 15,000 students.

Premier Jacinta Allan said she was ‘disappointed’ by the exams bungle. Picture: Nadir Kinani

Students also insist six multiple choice questions from the VET Information and Communications Technology information booklet were used “word for word” in the actual exam.

The veteran year 12 teacher and co-ordinator said he believed the exam questions, prompts and case studies were accidentally embedded in “just about every exam cover sheet as the VCAA rushed to release new versions”.

“Only subjects with new study designs were exempt – like English – as the sample exams were released earlier.”

“The VCAA went in and changed all the exams they could rewrite, including the ones with multiple choice questions such as Psychology,” he said.

“This is why the Psychology exam looks like it does – there’s no imagery and it looks like a rough draft.

“But there was a problem for subjects with complex questions like Business Management and Legal Studies because they had to rewrite the whole question.

“And that’s why Business, Legal and Specialist Maths weren’t fully changed as there wasn’t time.”

He said the possibility of exams such as Biology and Environmental Science being affected “will probably never come out” because the cover sheets with the leaked questions were not available.

“All it takes for one student to download them and the whole exam is compromised,” the veteran teacher said.

VCAA chief says exams ‘not compromised’

The embattled chief of the VCAA on Thursday admitted exam questions and case studies were included on sample exam covers accessed by students but continued to deny that VCE exams undertaken by thousands of students had been compromised.

Kylie White told ABC radio that students should “focus on their exams” instead of worrying about the leaked materials.

“The VCAA examinations haven’t been compromised and all students can be very confident about completing their exams,” she said.

“Some of the material — it was quite brief really — they included some of the prompt material or it could have included one or two questions. But those questions and prompt material may be similar but they are not the same as to what’s in exams.

“We discovered there was an issue before the written exam commenced and were able to then review our exams and check our exam questions were different to the sample material that had been inadvertently included.”

Exams already sat in Business Management, Specialist maths and Legal Studies have been compromised. Picture: Supplied

Ms White, who is paid more than $380,000 a year to oversee the VCE exam process involving nearly 90,000 students, said any similarities were due to the study design, not the reuse of the leaked material.

“There are similarities and over the past exams you will see similar similarities and that’s largely because the content of the exams is the same each year,” she said.

“There are similarities but they are not the same questions.

“If students had seen the sample material before sitting the exams they would not have been an advantage to any of those students because … the questions were different.

“They should focus on their exams and have confidence in completing their exams.”

Ms White added that changes had been made to ensure the issue wouldn’t happen again.

“We’ve really reflected on the production issue that caused those sample covers to be impacted this year and we’ve looked at those processes to make sure we make all the improvements we need to make so it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

Victorian Commercial Teachers Association (VCTA) — which is a group for educators who teach accounting, business management, economics, industry and enterprise and legal studies — was among the first to make a complaint to the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) about the hidden content on exam cover sheets.

VCTA executive director Geoffrey O’Neill and Executive Officer Michelle Mitchell said in a statement to members the association was informed about the similarity between hidden content accessible from previously publicly available exam front covers and the actual 2024 VCE exam papers, by its own members.

“The VCTA values our productive and longstanding working relationship with the VCAA and felt it was our responsibility to bring these concerns to them to maintain the integrity of VCE assessments and fairness for our 3,400+ members and their students,” the statement said.

“Given the sensitive nature of this incident, the VCTA wrote a letter to the VCAA CEO earlier this week. In it, we outlined our concerns and requested a thorough investigation and appropriate actions to uphold fairness and integrity in the VCE assessment process.

“The letter specifically addressed concerns raised by our members regarding any unfair advantage (perceived or actual) for students who accessed the hidden content.”

Independent Schools Victoria chief Rachel Holthouse added her voice to the chorus of concern about the blunder.

“It’s disappointing that VCE exam students have been subjected to additional stress as a result of news that some students had early access to potential exam questions,” she said.

“We welcome comments by the education minister that questions were changed once the error was discovered and that no students will be advantaged or disadvantaged as a result of this incident.”