The VCAA-Monash partnership on VCE mathematics exams is, to say the least, excellent news. The exams will still be based on a nutso curriculum and the questions will still be perverted by nutso CAS, but there is good reason to hope that, within these constraints, the exam questions will be more coherent and more coherently written, with fewer and smaller errors.
There is a long, long way to go, but it would not have been possible to get this far without: Minister Carroll calling for the second exam review; Dr. John Bennett’s review taking on the exam issues with seriousness and directness and intelligence; Kylie White taking over from the appalling Stephen Gniel as VCAA CEO; and White and her VCAA colleagues taking on not just the letter of Bennett’s recommendations but also the spirit. And still it could have easily fallen apart already. Because, even with VCAA’s new good will, engaging the properly strong mathematicians is no gimme.
As Tony Gardiner noted in a comment, mathematicians are now nomads, products for sale in a global economy:
Marty’s comments on “senior mathematicians who cared” (Cherry, Love, et al) struck a chord. Cherry died in 1966, but his portrait used to hang in the Melbourne Uni mathematics coffee room (maybe still does). EA Love was still around during my visits (1979ff). The change Marty comments on is real – and I put it down to “globalisation”. Time was when each university was like the local church or cathedral: built to serve both God and the local flock of parishioners. Its “bishops” were serious servants of mathematics, but recognised a calling to convert the local heathen – so were rooted in their surrounding community. Now a university is more like a hotel room: a temporary base from which one can liaise with one’s natural (global) research community. Students can come and learn how to be part of that global community if they choose, but there is relatively little urge to *go out into the surrounding highways and byways*, or to devote time to checking the papers set by VCAA et al.
Mathematicians are now much less likely to identify with and be invested in the local community. Sure, they will have kids that go to the schools and so they will have thoughts and concerns as all parents do. But that is far short of having grown up in the city, regarding the city as theirs as a from-birth thing. It takes a conscious effort and/or further time to feel a part of and ownership of the city.
Many, probably most, of Monash’s mathematicians are neither born nor bred in Melbourne. Warwick Tucker, who has worked very hard to assemble his cavalry, has been in Melbourne only five or so years. Nonetheless, Warwick and his troops have taken possession of the VCE thing with admirable concern. It is great to see. And which raises the question: where is the University of Melbourne?
I have no idea why the University of Melbourne mathematics department would not be similarly engaged with VCAA in a formalised manner, but all non-appearances suggest that, as of now, there is no such engagement. True, UoM is well practised in snotty and self-serving elitism, grabbing the private school kids and letting the plebs fend for themselves. So, not caring about VCE, the screwball-ness of which disproportionately affects public school kids, fits right in. And, the nomad thing applies to UoM as much as Monash. But still.
For a good century, the Victorian senior exams were the University of Melbourne. UoM was the whole show, the boss of it all. Thomas Cherry and E. R. Love and many others were the bishops. Now, handed the first opportunity in decades to make a meaningful difference to senior school exams, all appearances suggest that the University of Melbourne doesn’t give a stuff.
Maybe … since substantial criticism of VCE exams in mathematics came from people associated with Monash, VCAA approached Monash. Just guessing.
Your guess is incorrect.
If I were the bureaucrat organising this, I would have thought very very carefully about how to manage informally and formally selecting Monash (and not other unis). After all, Melb Uni was a rare organisation my department altered its contracts for (many other orgs had to use our contract since we were bigger than them).
Informally I would have expected there would be checks on which uni was interested in doing it. I’d guess there’d at least have been a phone call to someone high up at Melb Maths to see if they were interested in doing it.
But Monash does have a historical track record in the area of school maths – https://www.qedcat.com/function/
Hi, JJ. I’m not sure what your first paragraph is on about, but I’m curious.
The inner workings of how VCAA is going about this are, well, inner. But I think two things are pretty obvious:
1) VCAA would now be looking damn hard for good mathematicians, because Bennett told VCAA that they need them.
2) VCAA has had “mathematicians” previously, whatever that means, but obviously not enough and/or not strong enough. So, VCAA will be being cautious, within their limits to navigate the mathematician waters.
Both UoM and Monash have something like a “track record”, but I don’t think either record accounts for much. The association with school mathematics is either off the point for VCE (Function, UMEP), or it was too many centuries in the past (Cherry, Love).
This really is a matter of building up the culture of academic administration/oversight again, from scratch.
Hi Marty – it’s about avoiding alienating stakeholders, particularly powerful ones, which is key in the bureaucracy. Procurement rules specify certain processes about entering into contracts with anyone – that’s the formal process and is probably fairly straightforward.
The really important one is making sure that there was some form of informal process that selected Monash that didn’t get Melb off-side if they wanted to do it. I don’t understand unis, except that as you noted they now have become businesses, but I’m guessing that prestige matters. The main thing I knew about Melb Uni was that their politics was far more complex and cut-throat than anything the department could manage. It might just have been a phone call to Melb to ask them and they weren’t interested (and have got confirmation at a senior level of course) or who knows?
So really what I’m saying is that I’m guessing that someone pretty senior would have contacted important people at eligible unis to make sure anyone important who wanted to do it was considered in some form or whatever.
Hope this is clear – as a bureaucrat, you never make a decision personally – that’s the Minister’s job – you devise a process that is defensible and reaches a reasonable conclusion that keeps important people reasonably satisfied.
Thanks, JJ. I take the general point, but I don’t think it’s the point here.
No mathematics department is begging “Oh, please let us vet your exams!”. The job sucks. No department would be pissed off to not do it, but UoM might now be embarrassed, and they should now be embarrassed.
I don’t know the details, but I am sure VCAA would now accept the help of any strong mathematicians. (Three years ago, they wouldn’t have,) The issue is, VCAA cannot judge the strength of the candidates.
Hi Marty – you’re on point. Over my career, I watched the links between the outside world (including academia) and the public service dwindle. Steering and rowing was one management mantra of the 90s – the department should steer and others should row – contracting out was all the rage. It gets to the point where the department lives in a separate very political universe (and it’s hard to manage contracts if only the contractors have the content knowledge and can easily pull the wool over your eyes – which is where we are now in many ways). Unfortunately things like COVID rather emphasise that the real world matters.
But from the academics’ side, their experience of the modern public service tended not to leave them with the desire to have more engagement (and I thought they were right to do so).
In a well-functioning VCAA, bureaucrats would have informal relationships with academia and know informally who the right ones were. Then you just need a formal process to get you to where you know you need to be.
The key question is how to ensure that VCAA keeps listening to academics over time when gravity is pulling the other way.
My experience is that we are moving to a more and more unequal society where in the rare situations that money is not as important, prestige seems to be. Would Melbourne see this as a loss of prestige?
Again, I agree with you, and again I think you’re off the point here.
I have no doubt that the monolithising of the public service discourages academic participation. But the main point in this case is the establishment of Education as its own academic discipline. Decades ago, teachers and education academics decided the academics were superfluous, and the bureaucrats were happy to agree.
UMEP still exists while MUEP doesn’t.
Jesus. That’s like a half-tracker and I have to choose where to hit it. Maybe let’s start with:
What fraction of UMEP do you imagine is undertaken by public school kids?
I think it was around the vicinity of 3/15 when I did it (not including public selective schools in that number.) The real shocking thing was that one of the students was doing specialist maths at VSV because their school didn’t offer it, which I learned was actually pretty common. I wonder what fraction of public schools offer spesh and what fraction of total spesh students are at public schools.
3/15 students or 3/15 schools?
Your follow up “wonder” is well worth wondering, although it is off the point if you’re still looking to defend UoM. (You’ll lose.)
3/15 students doing it at the school centre I was at. I wasn’t really looking to defend UniMelb, it was more of an attack at Monash for getting rid of MUEP.
Oh, sure. If you’re simply attacking Monash for getting rid of Extension then get in line. Although note that it was idiotic Monash Dean-types that killed it, not the Mathematics department, who lost money on Extension but still supported it.
I’d be surprised if, overall, public school kids in UMEP was as high as 20%.
Hi all,
I’m a bit late to the party, but I’m weighing in here as I used to teach the UMEP course at a public school from 2019 – 2021. We had anywhere from 1 – 3 students each year out of about 100-120 taking the course (from memory). There was only one other public school out in Gippsland somewhere that was running the program, but I don’t know how many students they had. My school closed the program after three years, but I was grateful my principal helped me to run it for that long, considering the expense.
So, sadly, I guess it’s likely under 10%, or at least it was back then.
Thanks, MyCool.
There are a number of possibilities. Exactly what the probability is for any of these, I cannot even begin to imagine and there remains the possibility that either i) the truth lies somewhere else entirely or ii) the truth is some combination of factors.
Some of the immediate ideas that come to mind are:
1. UoM takes a significant portion of students into undergraduate degrees who never completed VCE because they are from interstate or overseas. They therefore care more about making their first year courses the “establish a common ground” rather than caring about what is being taught in schools.
2. UoM recognise that the problem is far too difficult to be solved and so devote themselves to problems closer (with the distance metric being rather loosely defined) to home.
3. Someone at UoM suggested that UoM get involved and was unsupported, talked out of it or flatly told to leave it alone.
4. The education department put out a call to various universities and only Monash responded.
Whatever the reason for UoM not being involved, it does not change the fact that I’m happy Monash is involved.
I think you’re thinking a little too hard. The default position is for a University to do nothing. The universities have not been systemically involved for many decades. So, it takes a conscious effort to consider being involved, even if approached by VCAA. I just prefer maths departments that make a conscious effort to consider the manner in which they are part of the community, and what that means.
In any case, your last sentence is key. The CEO of VCAA and the Head of Monash Mathematics gave a very good interview yesterday, which I’ve linked at the bottom of the VCAA-Monash post.
My university employment never rose above the level of junior grunt, so I will have to trust your judgement on the apathy level.
I heard these radio snippets – and I’m still impressed that it has garnered a decent level of attention.
New snippet.
Still impressed.
I’ll cross my fingers they will get a chance at the curriculum next…
Who is “they”?
Universities, or ‘real’ mathematicians
I feel like the methods curriculum in particular needs to be rewritten from scratch – and I know you are also not a fan
“not a fan” is the understatement of the century.