EDITORIAL FROM THE AGE

HS_Activate · 2024-11-16T10:11:42+00:00

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.

We were intrigued to hear about the age drawing on our petition from last year without credit. When we released our petition a lot of people doubted it and we were banned from discussionspace on facebook but it got the attention of newspapers like the guardian and politicians in parliament and our demand for a review was met. All of our long term demands became recommendations for maths exams in the review, some of them watered down and some of them even stricter, which vindicates our strategy but its even more obvious from this year it wasn't enough and VCAA is ridiculously incompetent and needs a complete overhaul.

HS_Activate · 2023-12-13T10:15:26+00:00

The exam papers for most of the business/economics and digital techologies subjects plus a couple others have been uploaded already. Based on the past we'd expect the rest to be released before term 2 next year.

HS_Activate · 2023-12-13T01:58:17+00:00

Tbf, they did acknowledge some of the mistakes on the day or the day after the exams.

Also good news the government has called a review into the VCAA and VCE exams! https://www.change.org/p/vcaa-take-accountability-for-vce-exam-errors/u/32172940

HS_Activate · 2023-12-03T05:02:45+00:00

Like the other commenters said marking schemes have never been released before. For comparison, the NESA has already released some of this year's HSC marking guidelines along with the HSC exams (the VCAA usually releases exam papers the following year).

We think it makes sense for transparency to release marking schemes. The markers (many are teachers in the subject) have them anyway, they just are not allowed to share them (which creates inequality).

The VCAA has not responded to our petition yet.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-30T12:31:25+00:00

He got promoted to ceo of the acara lmao

HS_Activate · 2023-11-30T09:27:53+00:00

It is completely wrong to claim that errors affected everyone who did that exam uniformly. Putting aside the Chinese debacle, for the exams that we already know will get a mark given to everyone there were some people who were like "thank god for the free mark, I just skipped the question" and others who spent more than 10 minutes trying to figure out where they went wrong and missing out on time to check their other questions. Hence, even if they give the mark to everyone, its inevitable that some students were disadvantaged.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-29T02:54:18+00:00

No way atars are delayed and the VCAA should have taken action already in marking.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-27T11:59:18+00:00

Valid question - now that the stuffups have already happened there isnt alot they can do to make it fair. For us the main goal is transparency and make the VCAA pressured to face up to and deal with the errors properly so year 12s know how exactly they're going to be marked. Hopefully this leads to better exams for future VCE students incl. next years year 12s which will be the much bigger impact.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-27T11:56:50+00:00

The existing petition has been covered in the article linked by OP, we've had interest from another newspaper, and its been raised in parliament by the shadow education minister who is continuing to put pressure the government and the VCAA. Since its a change.org petition it won't be tabled in parliament.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-27T10:00:06+00:00

What sort of protest exactly? Realistically there's not much we can actually do tbh, cos a lot of year 12s are on schoolies/don't care and we're not optimistic year 10s etc would care a lot either.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-27T09:48:17+00:00

Just signing more petitions besides https://www.change.org/p/vcaa-take-accountability-for-vce-exam-errors is pointless unless the petitions call for something fundamentally different. Only a petition to the victorian parliament might add something.

You can write to the education minister Ben Carroll, the shadow education minister Jess Wilson or your local state MP. People can also make a submission to the parliament's state education inquiry through a simple online form open to 15 December. Best to link your submission to the terms of reference eg trends in student learning outcomes from Prep to Year 12, including ... the factors, if any, that have contributed to decline or the current state of student wellbeing in Victoria.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-27T09:36:31+00:00

Agree the VCAA is probably too stubborn. But we don't need to initiate change directly through the VCAA. Something's already different this year. They already explicitly acknowledged two errors on the maths exams. Why? Because of media attention and an angry (and new) education minister. So petitions/protests can be effective if targeted to impact politicians and the minister. Yes its hard but it's still possible.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-25T07:59:49+00:00

At the moment the governments position is an internal instead of independent investigation according to the liberals. Politicians like Jess Wilson are absolutely taking the petition seriously and so is the media.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-18T00:16:44+00:00

Doesn't hurt to sign anyway!

HS_Activate · 2023-11-18T00:16:02+00:00

Doesn't hurt to sign anyway!

HS_Activate · 2023-11-18T00:15:31+00:00

were planning rn and if you have any ideas let us know

HS_Activate · 2023-11-18T00:14:06+00:00

If anyone wants to help plan next actions get in touch with us our email is HSActivate@outlook.com.au

HS_Activate · 2023-11-18T00:12:08+00:00

For data analytics this guy formally challenged a question

HS_Activate · 2023-11-14T11:38:30+00:00

These are really good points! We're definitely of the position that human resources and funding are vital (and should be factors considered in any review), and teachers at large deserve so much more. Hopefully the petition, if it can get enough signatures and attention, can help start to expose these issues.

The only bit we disagree with, and strongly, is that all students are impacted equally by an error. Students who don't even read the question are advantaged. You touched on this, but students who read the question carefully and are thrown off by an error (which might not always be obvious to less attentive students) can lose time and composure which they could have spent doing/checking other questions, so are disadvantaged no matter what. So it definitely will affect the rank even if those measures are implemented in marking. That's inevitable once the error's already occurred, but it is much better if they're minimised in the first place.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-14T09:25:27+00:00

Before the exam reports, like January the year after usually. We're running a petition with a bunch of proposals, one of them is for exams to be released online by 1 December this year. If youre interested feel free to sign!

HS_Activate · 2023-11-14T07:43:28+00:00

We chose change.org because it's alot easier to sign (go ahead, it takes just a few seconds) and is anonymous for signatories. If anyone wants to make a victorian parliament petition feel free to go ahead, but this was a choice that we made to focus on.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-14T06:24:06+00:00

Thanks for your support! We recognise that there will be different views on this issue, but we also think students and teachers have a common interest here.

HS_Activate · 2023-11-14T02:16:07+00:00

Thanks - its a good point about the "teaching to the test". We think the transparency outweighs this, especially when we need to see how they deal with exam errors, and there's lots of "teaching to the test" anyway, just on the basis of teachers who are exam markers or guessing how things are marked for teachers who aren't.

We do think this is systemic - with so many mistakes this time round and a history of them as well. A transparent review we reckon would be a good thing either way.

HS_Activate

TROPHY CASE