Government cannot keep failing VCE students at exam time

“These stuff-ups should not have occurred in the first place … We have to ensure this won’t be repeated next year.”

Those were the words of Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll following problems with VCE – not this week, but this time last year. In November 2023, the additional difficulties facing our VCE students in what is already a stressful period were incorrectly expressed questions in maths exams and students of Chinese being given the wrong exam paper.

Education Minister Ben Carroll.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Indeed, errors in the content of maths exam papers seem to have become a perennial problem for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA), with similar issues reported by frustrated students in 2022.

Over the years, the approach to creating exams in our “Education State” has sometimes seemed almost comically slapdash, with sci-fi robots turning up in history questions and the work of a known author being misrepresented in an English exam. We tell students to look deeper in their research and not rely on Google, but it seems those examining their work aren’t always held to the same standards.

This year, things appear to have taken a turn for the worse, with real exam questions somehow ending up as “hidden” text in sample test material, known as cover pages, made available online. What’s more, it seems there were eyes on this particular “stuff-up”, but no one seems to have had the focus to prevent it from occurring.

The VCAA’s new chief executive, Kylie White, says that the error was discovered in October. This does not seem to have motivated the authority to ensure that entirely new questions were provided, with White conceding material that was “similar” – from what The Age has seen, almost identical – ended up in the exam papers put before students.

Carroll himself told reporters that he had been “alerted to the production issue about two weeks ago”, but it appears that his “strong instructions” about rewriting questions may not have been strong enough, or that the “monitoring” he described somehow lapsed at the crucial stage.

More than 80,000 students will sit exams in Victoria this year. How each individual performs is not the only thing they have to worry about, but also how they perform relative to their cohort. When the integrity of the examination system is called into question, with the prospect that some students have an advantage that others do not, years of effort towards the objective of further education are cast into doubt. As the minister has now admitted, VCE students and their families deserve so much better.

Last year, the VCAA accepted “full responsibility” for the errors and said its board chair would undertake a comprehensive review, in coordination with the Department of Education, into the proofing and vetting of exam papers. At the time, mathematician Marty Ross complained that the process of creating exam papers lacked transparency, describing VCAA as “astonishingly opaque”.

It is to be hoped that the announcement of a full review and an independent monitor for the 2025 exams will throw the doors wide open, but the devil will be in the detail. It is, after all, clear that internal review processes are failing.

In response to last year’s blunders, affected students set the VCAA some questions of their own, urging it to reveal how past mistakes had been addressed, how exams are put together and how exam-writing panels were appointed.

They also called for a greater role for subject-matter experts and for the release of marking schemes with full solutions by the end of the calendar year, to be followed by a report on each exam cycle identifying problems and how they were addressed.

The “solution” last year was to give all affected students full marks for the relevant questions. Yet even this does not entirely remedy the problem, since it benefits less well-prepared students.

And as one current VCE student points out, the advantage provided by having already seen and prepared for one question extends to the whole exam season, with time saved and composure being such important factors.

Seeking to reassure rattled students, Carroll urged them not to be distracted by this fiasco. “They should put their best foot forward,” he said.

But what about his department and the VCAA? Their best foot appears to be missing. Sternly worded statements and promises to do better will not be enough to pass the test this time.

They’ll already be marked down for failing to apologise to the young people who are directly affected by the latest bungle.

When answers are eventually provided we will need to see the working-out, too.

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