‘Students’ lives are affected by these errors … they deserve better’: Maths expert

A top teacher has blown the lid on the state’s highest level VCE maths exams, saying they’ve been riddled with errors for 20 years and robbed students of scholarships and the marks they deserved.

Top VCE maths exams have been riddled with errors for 20 years, robbing students of scholarships and top marks, a leading teacher claims.

John Kermond, one of the state’s top maths experts, has blown the whistle on the “life-changing” errors just seven weeks before the start of the 2023 VCE exam period.

In a submission to a state government inquiry, Mr Kermond said there were four “serious errors” in the 2022 specialist maths exam which cost at least one student a lucrative university scholarship.

“Students’ lives are affected by these errors. The students deserve better. A couple of marks here and there are potentially life-changing,” Mr Kermond, a leading teacher at an elite select-entry government school, said.

One of the state’s top maths experts has blown the whistle on the “life-changing” errors in exams.

“I personally know of at least one case where a specialist mathematics student has missed out on a scholarship by a 0.2 increment in their ATAR. They may have got that scholarship if the 2022 specialist mathematics exams had been marked correctly,” he said.

In his submission, Mr Kermond notes that “mathematics exams and examination reports have contained errors almost every year for the last 20 years”.

He said student confidence and performance was “severely undermined by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s (VCAA) consistent errors and failure to acknowledge them”.

Mr Kermond’s views are widely supported in the Victorian maths community.

A Bad Mathematics blog run by a professional mathematician with a PhD in maths has identified more than 90 serious problems with specialist maths exams and 77 in maths methods, including sample exams and Northern Hemisphere exams going back to 2006.

Rion Ahl, a student doctor and co-founder of the 50Coach online tutoring program, said maths students had repeatedly raised the issue of errors in recent years.

“With a test taken by thousands of students, there are bound to be those who have their scores affected by these mistakes and accuracy is so important when the stakes are so high,” he said.

Mr Kermond said students and teachers “should have confidence that the VCAA exams do not contain errors and are not marked using a marking system that contains errors”.

The 2022 specialist maths errors have been discussed widely discussed in VCE student forums, with the problematic questions labelled “defective”, “stupid”, “confusing” and “just plain wrong”. The “wrong” questions include exam 2, part A, questions 4 and 19 and exam 2, part B, question 6.

The concern has been raised just seven weeks out from the start of the 2023 VCE exam period. Picture: Nicole Cleary

However, a VCAA spokesperson said there were “no breaches of or material deviations from VCAA policy and procedure identified in the 2022 maths Exam”.

“The VCAA has confirmed that the questions did not present errors.”

Mr Kermond said he first raised the 2022 specialist maths errors during the exam period last year but the VCAA only commissioned an independent review of their exam development process in March 2023.

It’s understood the review, conducted by Deloitte using outside maths experts, found the language could have been more clear, but did not find serious errors that impacted on students.

This finding has been questioned by Mr Kermond, who said the “wrong words can give something a very different meaning”.

“I know for a fact that student were impacted by the errors, including those who said they spent more time on a misleading question than he would otherwise have done.”

But he said no outcome had yet been made public despite the 2023 specialist maths exams being held on November 3 and 6.

The issue comes amid a 35 per cent decline in specialist maths student enrolments since 2005, with numbers dipping below 4000 in 2022 for the first time.