Leading academics have called for an urgent overhaul of VCE exams after Victorian high school students sat tests plagued by a series of errors.
Thousands of students were given bonus marks for errors in specialist and general maths papers this year, while six Chinese language students at two schools were given the wrong exam papers.
Social media posts claimed to contain information from the wrongly distributed Chinese exam, which was not due to be held until Wednesday.
On Wednesday, the Victorian Curriculum And Assessment Authority issued a “special message” telling chief supervisors to instruct students to cross out a specific question.
It did not respond to questions about how the six students who completed the wrong Chinese exam would be marked, or whether a new exam was issued.
The VCAA has launched a review into the 2023 exams and issued an apology.
But experts say this isn’t the first year errors have been found and say more needs to be done to renew confidence in the “education state”.
How did the mistakes occur?
Victoria’s education minister, Ben Carroll, told reporters he was “disappointed” with the VCAA, adding he had met the body multiple times during the exam period.
“These stuff-ups should not have occurred in the first place,” he said on Monday. “We have to ensure this won’t be repeated next year.”
Carroll said he had asked the VCAA to work with academic experts in the writing, designing and vetting of exams.
Stephen Gniel, the former CEO of the VCAA who will be seconded to Acara as acting CEO from 20 November, told ABC Melbourne on Tuesday the VCE errors were “unacceptable” and said a review would be completed before the next exam period.
“Obviously something’s gone wrong this year … we’ve been upfront about that,” he said.
The state’s shadow education minister, Jess Wilson, said the investigation should be independent, and accompanied by a public report “well ahead” of 2024’s papers.
“It is unacceptable that the minister is refusing to commission an independent review of a VCE exam period that has been riddled with mistakes, errors and mismanagement,” she said.
“A review conducted by the same people responsible for these mistakes will not get to the bottom or what went wrong, or fix the system for future years.”
But Marty Ross, a mathematician said the issue wasn’t just a one-off citing a shift in recent decades away from top professors and subject experts being responsible for exam papers to education academics and teachers, who may not be as qualified to pick up on mistakes.
“We’re been fighting this for years,” he said. “VCAA claims mathematicians are involved but what do they mean by it? Because it’s evident they don’t have the mathematical expertise for the job.”
Ross said transparency was also an issue, with greater accountability needed as to who constructed the papers and how they were vetted.
“One of the problems is we don’t know the process,” he said. “VCAA is astonishingly opaque … they need to admit they have a problem.”
In response to questions about the Chinese exam, a spokesperson for the VCAA said any breach of integrity was “taken seriously” and it had taken necessary action to “ensure exams are fair”.
So far, though, the VCAA hasn’t given an explanation of how any of the mistakes occurred.
How have teachers and students responded?
Teachers, students and academics have been highly critical of Victoria’s examinations, which finished on Wednesday.
Almost 200 people signed a student petition condemning the “unacceptable” mistakes and urging the VCAA commit to a number of reforms, including transparency over the writing, checking and administration process and a full overhaul of future exams.
The VCAA has not responded to the petition.
Were these the first errors?
A group of mathematicians allege mistakes have been appearing on past VCE papers for more than a decade, including last year.
Ross and his colleague Burkard Polster, a Monash University professor, have been lobbying the VCAA to improve the quality of maths exams, after raising concerns about the presence of “serious errors” in 2022 papers.
Their complaints contributed to an external review conducted by Deloitte.
A summary of the report, provided to the mathematicians last month, claimed there were “no major mathematical errors” in the 2022 exam, instead identifying “room for improvement in the language and grammar used and level of marks provided”.
In a parliamentary submission this year, teacher John Kermond similarly alleged mathematics exams and reports contained errors “almost every year for the last 20 years”. He said student confidence was “severely undermined” by the VCAA’s “consistent errors and failure to acknowledge them”.
The VCAA continues to deny there were any serious errors on exams in 2022, despite dozens of mathematicians signing an open letter alleging at least five questions were “unacceptably flawed”.
How are other states faring?
Significant mistakes have not been picked up in any of the other 2023 exams.
The Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (Qcaa) said it issued one notice to schools ahead of an exam this year to correct a typographical error.
In 2020, it also made a late change to a mathematical methods test in 2020 based on a grammatical mistake.
The New South Wales Education Standards Authority – responsible for the HSC – issued no errors this year but has been subject to some past controversy.
In 2022, it mistakenly published exam results several days early, prompting an investigation, and in 2020 a Sydney school appealed after an exam supervisor gave the wrong finish time.
A spokesperson for Nesa said it followed “rigorous procedures” to limit disruption to students during the exam period, citing committees made up of 300 members who developed the written papers.
“HSC exams are reviewed by experienced teachers and subject experts to ensure they align with exam specifications and are within scope of syllabuses,” they said.
