I’m in the middle of my VCE - this exam cover-up has sent the rumour mill wild

I’ve taken a break from studying for my last VCE exam to write this piece. Once I walk out of that exam room next Wednesday, I know that VCE will gradually begin to recede away into the distance. Before long I won’t remember the Wordsworth quotes, chemical formulae and sections of the Constitution that I spent two years cramming into my brain.

But right now, VCE still feels like my entire life. Most of my waking hours, for the past two years, have been spent working towards these five exams in November. And so those exams come to be imbued with a colossal significance that would be hard for anyone except a year 12 student to understand. We’re all trapped in the same bizarre, pressurised bubble; and yes, we’re aware that our ATARs aren’t the be-all and end-all, but we’re so emotionally invested and exhausted that it doesn’t seem that way right now.

VCE student Saria Ratnam prepares for her final exam amid embarrassing revelations that some students have accessed leaked questions.Credit: Joe Armao

That’s why, when I found out on Thursday that questions from at least 22 VCE exams had been leaked to some students due to a technical error, I wasn’t just shocked, but pretty devastated. The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s claims that no student will be disadvantaged feel, at best, hollow. If the compromised questions aren’t counted in our results, then that’s frustrating for everyone who legitimately got them right. And any student who’s seen some of the questions beforehand will have saved time, and therefore gained an advantage, for the rest of the exam – which can’t be factored in.

To most people observing this scandal, it’s no doubt another news story about an embarrassing bureaucratic blunder. To me and tens of thousands of teenagers across the state, it means everything; the unravelling of two years of work. It feels profoundly unfair to have put in so much effort, to have endured the tears, stress and meltdowns that VCE inevitably entails, and then find out that some people got an upper hand.

I don’t blame anyone who viewed the leaked questions. The cover pages were published legitimately on the VCAA website for students to fairly gain information about the structure of the coming exams. Some may have simply copy-and-pasted without realising that this allowed them to access actual exam questions that were supposed to be hidden.

I’m also not angry with those who did so knowingly after word got out about the leak. (And the rumour-mill is running wild among VCE students about how many knew.) The ATAR is, after all, a ranking system; we’re pitted against each other, reminded constantly that we have to do all we can to get on top. The very nature of the VCE teaches us to be individualistic and opportunistic; it’s not surprising that when an opportunity to gain an advantage arises, students take it.

Instead, I feel frustrated by how this has been handled. Quite frankly, it doesn’t make sense that after the questions were leaked, they weren’t rewritten entirely, and that only perfunctory changes were made. Especially as the error was discovered in October. In one of my subjects, Legal Studies, the only amendment to the exam was the names of the people in the scenarios. In the Specialist Mathematics exam, the numbers but not the actual question were changed. When we, as students, have spent months preparing for these assessments, it doesn’t seem right that a few questions couldn’t be rewritten to preserve the exams’ integrity.

Not to mention another key aspect of this mishandling; the nebulous messaging that has surrounded it. Students, but also teachers, heard about the question leaks not from the VCAA, but from the media. The education minister has announced a review into the bungle but right now, in the middle of the VCE, we don’t know the extent of the problem, or how we’ll be affected; it all seems to keep unfurling in a cloud of rumours and misinformation. When we should be focussing on the exams that we still have left, the confusion is putting more obstacles between us and our goals.

And that’s what is most disheartening about this saga. Not the mistake itself, but the failure of authorities to own up to it. We’ve been taught to respect our education, act with integrity, work hard, and trust that it will pay off. And the faith that we’ve put in our educational system has been undermined.

More than that, the VCAA is also one of the first bureaucratic authorities that year 12s directly interact with. One of our first insights into the workings of government. And what we’ve seen is three consecutive years of exam mistakes, culminating in this year’s colossal blunder.

This scandal risks disillusioning us, eroding our trust in the nature of authority. We’ve seen in the US and many other parts of the world, what happens when young people lose trust in leaders and government. This week, Victoria’s year 12s were shown an example of the bureaucracy lacking accountability; preserving its self-image with a cover-up, at the expense of integrity and honesty. That’s a lesson on leadership and power that we won’t forget.

At the end of the day, the technological fumble was an honest mistake. Failing to clean it up isn’t. Whether young people maintain confidence – not only our educational system, but in the nature of leadership – will be shaped by this saga. Our leaders can choose what lesson we learn from this; it’s a matter of teaching by example.

Saria Ratnam is a Melbourne high school student who was highly commended in the 2023 Age/Dymocks Essay Prize for young writers.

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