Thursday, 14 November 2024

VCE exams

Jess WILSON (Kew) (17:31): (940) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education, and the action I am seeking is an apology to the year 12 students of Victoria, who have yet again had their exams compromised by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. One year ago almost to the day I stood in this place and called on the minister to commission a comprehensive and independent investigation of the 2023 VCE exam process conducted by the VCAA. This was off the back of multiple errors made during the 2023 VCE exam period across specialist maths, general maths and chemistry.

Let us not forget that in 2023 errors came off the back of the 2022 maths exams, which were so riddled with errors that Labor had to call in Deloitte to try and clear things up. Last year, with the usual Labor fanfare, a review was conducted, and we were assured that those issues would be addressed. ‘No more problems. Nothing to see here,’ the VCAA and the minister told us. But once again, for the third year in a row, the government has put Victorian students at a disadvantage. For three years in a row the VCAA and the Labor government have shown how little they care for the hard work and stress our year 12s go through during exams. Three years in a row the Allan Labor government has overseen bungled VCE exam periods, and now students are paying the price. It is so incredibly unfair for our VCE students, who work so hard, study so hard for their exams and then have their exams’ integrity called into question.

It is beyond clear that the review of the 2023 exams has failed to fix systemic issues at the authority. These errors continue to persist, and these are only the ones that we know about. It is simply impossible to have confidence that there are not errors that we have not yet discovered. In four subjects thousands of students had access to documents that have been described as ‘de facto cheat sheets’. These sample exams contain almost identical questions and case studies to the final exam papers. Extraordinarily, the VCAA and the minister were notified of this issue in mid October – weeks ago – and yet they still allowed tens of thousands of Victorian students to sit the exams that they knew had been compromised online. Can I pay tribute to specialist maths teacher John Kermond, who has been belling the cat on this and trying to call out the VCAA for their ongoing failures.

Make no mistake, three years in a row presents a pattern of very concerning behaviour. This is a pattern of behaviour we had been assured would be stopped but instead has persisted yet again into 2024. We need the minister to guarantee that no more exams will be compromised during this VCE period, and we need the minister, on behalf of the VCAA, to apologise to all VCE students.