- by Victorian Comrade
- The Guardian
- Issue #2128
Photo: pexels.com (CC0)
Over 50,000 students attempted the Victorian Certificate of Education year 12 exams this year. Supervising them is an important task for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA). Are they up to it?
In 2024 56 out of 116 end of year exams in Victoria were compromised after exam cover previews provided by VCAA were found to contain invisible but highlightable text that contained content present in the exams. Understandably this has created doubts surrounding the academic integrity of the exams, and many year 12’s, fear for their own results given that other students having access to exam questions as early as October.
One VCAA solution has been to insist that the slip-up won’t affect final assessments – this despite very similar questions turning up in the actual exams. Another, more creative solution is ‘anomalous grading.’ Put simply, this means that students who excelled in exams without cheating, but achieved poor results earlier in the year will have their marks adversely affected in reference to any compromised exam materials.
The stuff-up happened despite VCAA being aware of this issue in October and assuring the state government that changes had been made to the affected questions and that they in no way compromised the validity of the exams. VCAA boss Kylie White said “The VCE examinations haven’t been compromised and all students can be very confident about completing their exams.” The reality of the situation was however that no significant actions were taken to resolve the issues.
Additionally, statements were made mitigating the severity of the issue and basically lying to the public. “There are similarities, but they’re not the same questions” is an entirely false claim given the fact that multiple maths questions were exactly the same, apart from the numbers being discussed.
Another blatant example is the inclusion of compromised legal studies exam case studies where the only difference was the names of the parties involved. Kylie White’s resignation as VCAA chief after the government ordered a sweeping review of the body demonstrates just how severely VCAA failed to remedy the situation. Of course, this entire debacle follows after a slew of albeit much more minor but still genuine exam failures and errors attributed to VCAA, with 2023’s general maths and Chinese language exams having multiple error and 2022’s exam having five general maths exam questions with completely incorrect answers.
Victoria has ‘the education state’ on its car number plates. There’s obviously a lot more work needed.
