Last week, the MAV held their 2025 VCE Conference. The majority of the conference consisted of Meet the Assessors sessions, in which the guys in charge of marking the 2024 exams explained where and how students went wrong (officially, purportedly).1 This was presumably a valuable fleshing out of the important messages from the exam reports and marking guides. For those who were able to be there. For those who paid for the privilege.
VCAA is a government entity supplying an important service to Victorians, paid for by Victorians. This service includes preparing the VCE exams, grading the exams and providing feedback on this grading. The general principle is that such a service should be free and accessible to all, and certainly there must be as close to equal access as is feasible. At the moment, this is simply not the case.
There is zero argument for any exam information session bearing a stamp of VCAA officialdom not being free for any teacher who wishes to attend. For those unable to attend, a recording of the session should be quickly and freely available. There is also zero argument for VCAA permitting any other body to profit from such sessions.
Does the MAV so profit? It is unclear but it seems highly likely. It was suggested to us that somewhere between 500 and 1000 teachers attended last week’s conference, which does not include those who may have signed up in order to receive MAV’s SACs and whatnot, and who will have later access to MAV’s recordings of the videos. Whatever the precise numbers, at $450 a ticket ($360 for MAV Members), that amounts to hundreds of thousand of dollars raked in. There also would have been significant expenses, of course, for the use of RMIT’s facilities and staff, reasonable compensation for presenters and SAC writers, gallons of second rate coffee and so forth. Still, it is difficult to imagine that MAV failed to make a tidy profit.
Now, to be clear, the MAV conference was on more than the exam assessors, with SAC business included as well; the SAC business was reportedly more properly MAV stuff,2 and was arguably the more sought after component. There was also supposedly some by-the-way conference announcement that VCAA would be publishing slides of the assessor sessions, with commentary or something. This may all be true and none of it much matters.
A Meet the Assessors session should simply not be part of any paid event, no matter what else comes with the ticket and no matter what may be offered later for non-participants. On VCAA perhaps intending to publish some version of the presentations, if it is true then it is new and an improvement over past practice. But it would still be delayed and virtual-only and non-interactive; it is not meeting the assessors in any manner and it amounts to a very poor consolation prize.
It is astonishing that VCAA has been willing be part of this smelly arrangement with the MAV. The arrangement has been there for many years, and for many years people have complained to us about it (and about other, lucrative conflicts of VCAA interest). There were bigger fish to smell, however, and obviously VCAA has been of no mind to listen to any voices of decent common sense. Now, maybe it is different.
VCAA has had the Bennett review, which is still being implemented, and, following last year’s exam leak stuff-up, VCAA is now undergoing a root-and-branch review. VCAA also has a new acting CEO, David Howes. Howes was less than forthright during a Senate Estimates that touched on the 2022 debacle, and he is unlikely to be a Kylie White, but he is definitely a huge improvement over Gniel.3 With all this, maybe VCAA will think more seriously about its buddies and the proper way to associate with them.
Forcing teachers to pay if they wish to meet VCE exam assessors, forcing them to be part of an MAV event, making it cheaper for MAV members, it is all simply disgraceful and it should cease. Now.
1) A session in which one could ask the assessors where and how they went wrong would of course be much more interesting.
2) A person who attended the conference indicated to us that the SAC sessions were about MAV’s SACs and general advice on writing SACs, rather than being Meet the Auditors sessions. The latter, of course, would have been just as improper as the Meet the Assessors sessions.
3) I have had some minor contact with David Howes.
Thank you yet again for exposing the pathetic excuse for an education system that we have to endure.
Thank you. When commenting, please do not leave the name blank. It can be made up, but I get frustrated with multi-Anonymous.
Thankfully it is the school professional development budget that pays for these things in the most part, and the teacher PD gravy train has been standing room only for some time now.
Are these sessions useful? Yes, you get to talk with other teachers and share some ideas. Do the MAV presenters do a good job? Sometimes. Do you get anything out of the meet-the-assessors that you don’t get from reading the reports? Debatable.
Is it a conflict of interest that MAV is the only organisation running meet-the-assessors? I don’t know, but it feels a bit wrong; maybe VCAA should run the sessions themselves.
If the meet the assessors sessions are in themselves of debatable value, that is only pointing to more that urgently requires fixing.
Maybe you should go to one and see for yourself… you would enough material for
blog posts.
I’ve seen one, and exactly one.
Marty, do you know the ratio of assessors from private to public schools? I attended once and refused to live in their fantasy world where you were told you could sit with colleague for 3-4 hours to moderate their “ideal investigation SAC” after spending weeks to mark them. And a person from VCAA told the audience “you rank your students’ SAC based on the quality of the investigation” then when pressed how to assess the quality, the answer is “‘you just know it”. Ha ha ha. What a shamble!
Thanks, hvo. I’m not sure if you’re talking about exam+assessors or SAC+auditors. The former is a mess and the latter is a disaster.
I’m not sure the point you’re making, but I get the sense that the VCAA inner sanctum is private-heavy. I don’t know that is an issue. My concerns are competence and honesty and, here, equality of access.
Clearly inappropriate, but hard to see what will drive change. Very handy for the VCAA to align with MAV. Could possibly complain to ombudsman, but unclear if that would have any effect. Overall picture is of a government with no money, desperate to avoid negative publicity in the exam space. Not a rosy outlook for improvement.
I’m marginally more optimistic than that.
You are of course correct, that the government has zero interest at the moment in positive reform. But there is still Bennett in place, and there is the post-2024 root-and-branch review. Greasy business of the MAV kind is not remotely the focus of the current review, but it could still be addressed.
As I keep saying, VCAA is schizophrenic right now, and it is not at all clear which VCAA will win out.
The recent cancellation of offenders in high schools trial highlights just how out of control the government is. Normally such an initiative would have gone to cabinet where every minister is briefed on it. If it didn’t that’s a breakdown of standard government. If it did, then the government really is running massively scared to cancel after agreeing to it. Either way, the best hope is the vcaa ceo and luck.
JJ, what is this? I’m not sure to what you are referring.
They were going to trial young offenders with ankle bracelets attending high schools. They had gone as far as briefing schools and the Herald Sun kicked up a stink. So they cancelled the trial. Ben Carroll claims that the department never told him about the trial, before he cancelled it (definitely not believable). My point is that there is a lot more swirling politics and less working cabinet processes going on around this government, with Ben Carroll clearly involved. It is definitely not a functional government and that makes it that much harder to achieve anything in a line department. Best chance is for CEO to quietly change things, but it’s a high risk game as any changes could draw vcaa straight back into the swirling politics. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-04/government-backflip-youth-crime-ankle-bracelets-school/105007168
I see. Thanks, JJ. I hadn’t heard about the YO idea. Not sure what I think, except that of course Murdoch never thinks. I definitely agree, it is not the political climate for bold moves. And it is hard to have a CEO changes things when you don’t have a CEO.