A leaked leaked exam explainer

My daughter Polly receives her Year 12 results tomorrow. I'm proud of her efforts this year, however the numbers fall.

I’m also extremely proud of her for dressing up as Forky from Toy Story 4 for Year 12 Muck Up day.

Speaking of muck-ups, has there ever been a Year 12 assessment period so blighted by an administrative error? This week, the list of 56 leaked exams expended to 65, or in other words, all the exams. It wasn’t every question that could be found in ‘invisible ink’ below the exam’s cover sheet, but for some subjects there were huge potential advantages. Polly did Product Design, for example, and she subsequently learned that a case study worth 41 of 90 marks was available beforehand. How do you know if a kid saw it? VCAA have told us that they have ‘experts’ looking for ‘anomalies’. Think for a moment how difficult that task is.

• Anyway yesterday we received our leaked exam explainer from the acting head of VCAA, and, this is the unbelievable part —if you copy and paste all the text into Word, and change the colour of the font, YOU CAN SEE ALL THE VARIOUS THOUGHTS THE COMMS TEAM HAD COMPOSING THE LETTER!

I can’t believe they did it again.

Here it is, with the leaked bits.

10 December 2024

Is it 10 December or 10th December? Leo, can you check this? Remember, WE set the educational standards in this State.

Dear students, parents and carers

Just a note that carers are placed last again here. Consider whether we should finally give them a go as first mentioned group? Carers, parents and students? This might not be the letter to experiment but let’s wheel back on this one in 2025! Well done on the font by the way, Michelle. You’re right about Arial being the best ‘bad news’ font. Who can stay angry at Arial!

I write to advise that the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) has completed the marking and analysis of the 2024 VCE examinations.

Great suggestion Ahmed on using the full VCAA name! Makes us seem authoritative because we get to call ourselves a capital A Authority. I love it! Gavin! I saw your markup where you called it ‘the guessing of the 2024 VCE examinations’. lol from me!

The Victorian Tertiary Admission Centre has considered the examination results data provided by VCAA and approved the progression to calculation of ATARs.

Look can I have a bit of a clap here! Listen to how in control I sound. We’ve got data! VTAC like our data! We can leave out the ‘what effing choice do we have!’ that Melinda screamed at us during the round table last week. She’s always had a sharp tongue that Melinda. Anyway, I’ve tied them to us beautifully with that sentence. Hopefully the angry parents and carers call them next week instead of us! Angry carers and parents? Does it work the other way round? It just might you know!

VCE results and ATARs will be available as planned on Thursday 12 December.

Hal-le-fucking-lujah. It’s been a looooooong month. Merimbula in January can’t come quickly enough!

In the course of the marking process, the VCAA became aware that a further 9 examination replica covers included examination material that could be viewed using specialist software, bringing the total number of examinations impacted to 65.

Look, I still say we shouldn’t put an actual numeric for the total number of exams affected, but you’ve all outvoted me on this. 65 seems a lot, and I guess it is, because it is THE LOT. ‘Specialist software’ was Mikey’s idea and I love it! The kids had to copy and paste the material from the replica covers into Word and then change the font colour. Can we help it if these future NASA types find a way?

The analysis conducted by the Expert Advisory Panel has concluded that 25 of the 65 examinations either had sufficient changes made to them

Gold stars for you, Michelle! Changing the exam questions was your idea!

or the published material was such that no advantage could be obtained from it.

Hopefully they read this bit fast, because we’re saying ‘exams where getting the question early is not of any help’.

The panel’s analysis of the remaining 40 examinations identified 69 students with anomalous results across 5 exams, out of more than 304,000 total examinations.

These are very specific numbers, and people tend to believe specific numbers. I think we’ve chosen some great numbers here and the team should be really proud of itself. Keep in mind that the carers parents and students (maybe it doesn’t work?) are having to process here that the leaking of questions on every VCE exam distorted the results of 69 students, statewide. Maybe we should have gone with 169?

None of these students were clustered by school or any other relationship that could be determined, suggesting there was no coordinated behaviour to access examination material

Beyond putting it out on Reddit.

To avoid any consequent disadvantage for other students, the Panel recommended those 69 students were removed from the standard study score calculation including the distribution of study scores.

Maybe we should have gone with 169?

The scores of the 69 students were then inserted into the overall distribution

Will they swallow the idea of 1.06 students benefitting per exam leaked? Maybe we should have gone with 1069?

after the study scores had been distributed.

A lot of people won’t be following this, especially the humanities kids.

In no cases have students had marks deducted from their examination results.

This sounds good. Nobody disadvantaged. Not the kids who had the exam questions before the exam. Not the kids who didn’t have the exam questions that the other kids had before the exam.

The VCAA again acknowledges and apologises for the stress and concern that this process has caused to the students and educators impacted.

God I need Merimbula now!. Not about me, I know.

Your sincerely

Interim Chief Executive Officer

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority