The Victorian government hasn’t ruled out taking marks off VCE students who used de facto exam “cheat sheets”, with more than 56 tests now found to be affected and the chief executive of the curriculum authority resigning.
The education minister, Ben Carroll, on Monday confirmed Kylie White had resigned as chief executive of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA), effective immediately.
White had only been in the position for a year, after having been recruited by the state government after the discovery of multiple mistakes in the 2023 maths exams.
In this year’s blunder, the VCAA published sample cover pages that contained hidden text in seemingly blank sections, which, when copied into another document, revealed a series of questions and answers identical or very similar to those in the final exams.
Of the 116 VCE exams, 56 were affected by the “publishing error,” with the impact varying from “one or two multiple-choice questions” being the same or similar, to some exams where up to 50% of the questions were replicated from the sample cover sheets.
However, Carroll said no exams were completely identical to the cover sheets.
He said he became aware of the issue in mid-October, but was given “inaccurate” assurances by the VCAA that the exams would be rewritten.
“I was given reassurances that the exams had been rewritten – that has now proven to be inaccurate. While some exams were rewritten to a satisfactory standard, others were not,” Carroll said.
“That’s why I’m deeply angry and upset. The reassurances I was provided that the examinations were being completely rewritten has not been the case.”
The cover pages were also pulled offline at the time, although they continued to be widely shared by students.
Carroll, who ordered a “root-and-branch review” into the structure and operations of the VCAA last week, has also appointed an independent expert advisory panel to ensure no students would be given an unfair advantage by the publication of the cheat sheets.
Led by former VCAA chief executive John Firth, the panel will use the existing grade-check process to identify any “anomalies” in how students have responded to affected questions, Carroll said.
“This process will identify any student who has performed significantly above the expected levels,” he said.
“If so, results will be investigated to identify if they had advantage from the early publication of VCE examination questions. Following this process, if questions have been identified that any student has an unfair advantage, adjusting will be made to student marks.”
According to Carroll’s media release, this could be done by “invalidating a question and awarding all students who sat this exam a full mark if necessary”.
However, Firth did not rule out taking marks off students.
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“I don’t want to pre-empt anything that could happen. So if, say, a multiple choice question worth one mark performed inconsistently with the rest of the paper, then you could take that mark off or ignore that question,” he said.
Firth said the panel would be guided by “high quality, reliable data”, such as the student’s performance on other questions contained in the exam, their results in previous exams and how they fared compared to other students.
“We’re not shooting in the dark here. There is plenty of evidence and plenty of material available for us to analyse,” he said.
The opposition’s education spokesperson, Jess Wilson, described the process as “convoluted”.
“How on earth is VCAA going to know which student had an advantage by seeing the sample questions compared to students that have … studied hard and have done really well on an exam? This is the problem,” she said.
“We’re talking about potentially taking marks off students without any proof that they’ve actually done anything wrong … they are told to go online and download the sample papers.”
Carroll also announced that the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership’s chief executive, Marcia Devlin, would replace White in an interim capacity.
He said he was confident VCE results would still be published by 12 December, well before the first round of university offers in mid-January.
“I apologise to all students impacted by the inadvertent publication of examination material on the exam cover sheets,” Carroll said.
“The VCE exams are stressful enough, the last thing that year 12 students need is additional stress and uncertainty from the administration of examinations.”
