VCE exams crisis: Schools receive wrong recordings for Music Performance exams

Yet another major blunder to the VCE exam process has been uncovered, with schools sent the wrong recordings to play for students at the upcoming Music Performance examinations.

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority is managing a further embarrassing mistake in VCE exams, with music recordings sent to schools that don’t match the exam paper.

The blunder involves the exams in Music Repertoire Performance and Music Contemporary Performance, which are being held on Monday and Tuesday next week.

Large slabs of the Music Contemporary Performance exam were among the questions and case studies from 22 subjects known to be leaked on the exam cover sheets and accessed by potentially thousands of students.

A VCE co-ordinator told the Herald Sun: “With so many stuff ups, supervisors are only allowed to play first seconds of CDs to test. Not listen.”

He said he “can’t recall a time where VCAA have ever resent or asked for material to be returned”.

The wrong music was sent to schools for the upcoming VCE Music Performance examinations. Picture: iStock

The Herald Sun obtained a letter to schools from Justin Seabury, VCAA director of Enrolments, Assessments and Results as part of the Assessment and Reporting Division of the authority.

It reads: “Due to an issue with the examinations listed below, the VCAA will deliver updated examination materials (examination papers, CDs and USBs) for the following VCE studies on the morning of Monday 18 November via its secure courier”.

It’s because the wrong music was sent out to schools in the second delivery of exam materials on November 1.

The letter sent to schools confirming new exams are hurriedly being reissued to schools due to a mistake in their contents. Picture: Supplied

Teachers are being told to return all material in the secure room at their schools “unopened”, with a VCAA courier collecting the package on Friday 15 November.

“Materials should be included in a separate sealed gold envelope

marked ‘Confidential: Attention Maria Fragale’, placed in a pink bag and provided

to the courier by your Chief Supervisor with the completed papers – in a different pink

bag(s) – for the examinations you have administered on that day, as per normal

collection procedure,” the letter said.

As the Herald Sun revealed on Thursday, the rewriting of dozens and dozens of exams after the breach was discovered on October 10, has led to a multitude of issues in the revised exams.

One source said couriers were “making a fortune running around the state dropping off boxes of new exams to schools”.

The two exams are sat by a total of about 1500 students.

The exams are among the 25 exams yet to be sat by students.

Music Contemporary Performance was one of the exams where the cover exam issued by the VCAA had a number of questions hidden on it prior to a new version being uploaded on after October 10.

This information included an excerpt from album The Jack Earle Big Band, with the instructions it would be played five times.

There was also a question accompanying this example, asking students to describe the characteristics of the contemporary jazz style.

Music Contemporary Performance
Material accessible to students on the exam cover sheet

Album: The Jack Earle Big Band (Jack Earle Records, 2015)
The excerpt will be played five times. There will be silent working time after each playing.

First playing (1′27″) – 10 seconds of silence
Second playing (1′27″) – 30 seconds of silence
Third playing (1′27″) – 1 minute of silence
a. Describe how the characteristics of the contemporary jazz style are achieved by the performers in this excerpt. (4 marks)

Section B.
Question 3 (4 marks)
a. Listen to the following two intervals. Each interval may be played harmonically and/or melodically, ascending and/or descending. Identify the size and the quality of each interval. 2 marks

First playing – approx. 5 seconds of silence
Second and final playing – approx. 5 seconds of silence
1. 2. b. Identify the size and the quality of each interval below.

a. Describe how the characteristics of the contemporary jazz style are achieved by the performers in this excerpt. (4 marks)
In your response, you may choose to refer to one or more of the following:
• tone colour
• articulation
• dynamics
• duration
• texture
• transition

SEE ALL THE UNCOVERED HIDDEN CHEAT SHEETS HERE

Teachers outraged over ‘incomprehensible’ question

Meanwhile furious media teachers are demanding answers from the VCAA, after a question worth 10 marks was included in the year 12 exam, which they claim wasn’t in the study design.

One of the sections in the exam, which was held on Wednesday, provided students with a case study about a media product aimed at high school students aged 12 to 16 called “Sc-Fi High”.

Both components to this question were worth a collective 10 marks, with one question asking students to describe a science-fiction convention, despite there being no explicit requirements for students to know the sci-fi genre in the study design.

Media students were assessed on science-fiction related content, despite there being no explicit requirements of this knowledge in the study design. Picture: Getty Images

It’s suspected the question may have been added in if the exams were rewritten to address the assessment authority’s hidden exam question bungle.

But teachers say even if the question was intentionally included, a cohort of students who weren’t taught about science-fiction during their unit three and four studies were put at a massive disadvantage.

“There is nothing in the study design that specifically mentions sci-fi conventions. VCAA copying answers is one thing, but expecting students to demonstrate a knowledge about a topic that is not even in the study design is incomprehensible,” one teacher said.

“I know teachers who were deeply distressed, angry about the SAT section of the exam and felt that it gave an unfair advantage to schools who had either studied sci-fi as their narrative film, studied it for their production or watched it in their own time.

“It was clear that students from culturally diverse backgrounds were disadvantaged, and many either did not understand what ‘sci-fi’ was, or hadn’t been exposed to the genre before.”

The teacher said while some students may have had some understanding of the sci-fi conventions, it was not enough to answer the 10-mark question in depth.

“The question didn’t allow students to demonstrate their knowledge of the areas of study that the question related to (their major production), and had the potential to seriously impact their overall score,” the teacher said.

Teachers say the question on the Media exam marked ‘another VCAA blunder that students have to pay for’. Picture: iStock

“We are wondering how this question got through to the exam, as it didn’t mirror what the sample exam was like. Another VCAA blunder that students have to pay for.”

It comes as the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) – which facilitates access to tertiary education – told students to contact them if they had concerns about their VTAC applications.

“VTAC works with all senior secondary stakeholders and tertiary institutions to ensure a smooth transition to tertiary study for Victorian students,” a VTAC spokesman said.

“Students with queries about their VTAC application are encouraged to contact us via their VTAC account or on [phone].”

Meanwhile, universities have been left in the dark and are working to understand what the VCE exam bungle means for them.

VCAA exam leak explained

The latest gaffes come after a Herald Sun investigation found thousands of VCE students were able to access cheat sheets containing ­almost identical questions and case studies to those in their final exams in material uploaded online by VCAA.

The cheat prompts were accidentally included in the VCAA instruction booklets for each exam, called “cover sheets”.

VCAA discovered the issue in mid-October, after being alerted that students had been sharing online how they were able to highlight blank spaces on pages of booklets, which when pasted into a Word document ­revealed “hidden” questions and case studies.

Education Minister Ben Carroll acknowledged that his role as Education Minister made him accountable for the blunder 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”.

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.”