VCAA Says the Silent Bit Out Loud

Following on from the Bennett review, there has been significantly more transparency from VCAA regarding the VCE exams:¹ the 2024 exams were published very quickly after they were sat;² the marking guides came not long after (eventually replaced by proper guides); and then came the exam reports, in a significantly more timely manner than in previous years. Most recently (when?), VCAA has published “videos”, with “Chief Assessors” narrating “Meet the Assessors” slide shows on the grading of the exams. This is all good.³ It thus feels ungrateful to then employ this new-found transparency to turn around and attack VCAA. Nonetheless, a central purpose of the transparency is to permit proper scrutiny. And, when VCAA provides evidence that their screw-ups affected students, the most important aspect is that VCAA screwed up. So, here we are.

Before getting to the screw-ups, we should note that, and more important than the 2024 exam grading being better open to scrutiny, the Bennett review ensured the 2024 exams themselves were better. The vetting by press-ganged Monash mathematicians,⁴ and perhaps also VCAA’s recognition that they were in the public glare, meant that the exams contained fewer errors, and in particular fewer head-banger errors, and the questions in general were more reasonable and better written. To be clear, the exams were still not remotely acceptable. This cannot possibly occur until: VCAA’s execrable “study design” is deep-sixed and replaced by a coherent, deep and clear curriculum; VCAA gets over its perverting CAS-fetish; and VCAA lets go its coven of bitchy Victorian-era schoolmistresses, gives up on the anal retentive micro-marking and begins asking properly posed questions based upon solid content. We have a ways to go. Still, the 2024 exams were better. Really.

Although there was significantly less to hammer in the 2024 exams, however, there was definitely not nothing, and the bitchy grading added more. We won’t rehash it all here; that the Assessor videos are silent on the majority of the screwier aspects is not a great shock. It was a surprise that the assessor-narrators failed to clarify whether functions can have derivatives at interval endpoints, and God knows why VCAA simply doesn’t make up their damn mind, but whatever. Here, we shall consider some non-silence, some statements made in the Specialist Mathematics 1 Assessor video (and transcript (W,I)).

First, a couple warm-up stupids.

Question 1 on SM1 (which was part of the leak debacle), was a bread and butter complex polynomial question. Given , and with a preliminary step required to answer part (a), part (b) asked for the solutions of the equation . In effect, this required finding the factorisation , from which solving the equation was trivial. As the exam report (updated 18/12/25) indicated, however, students were not permitted to take the trivial jump to the solutions. As the assessor-narrator explained,

It is very important that students show that they are solving an equation. Some students jumped straight from the factorised form to the solutions. If this was done, students were unable to get full marks. 

Why were they unable to get full marks? Because you had any doubt whatsoever that the kids knew what they were doing? Or, rather, because you guys consider it your job to be dicks?

The SM2 video opens with a “We really are nice guys” preamble:

We always aim to assess fairly and look to award marks rather than take them away.

Following Chico, who are we gonna believe, you or our own eyes?

Back to SM 1. The second warm-up is Q3, which involved the function . Parts (a) and (b) were after the partial fractions and turning point, which were straight-forward enough. Then, part (c) required graphing the function, which was trickier.

Well, the left hand bit was easy enough, since it is simply an asymptotey thing, without intercepts or critical points to worry about. Except, as indicated in the exam report (updated 18/12/25) and marking guide, VCAA decided that this was too easy:

A common mistake was for the left-hand branch of the curve to be drawn too closely to the vertical asymptote. This could be avoided by evaluating the function at several points. For instance, finding that f(-2) = 9 and f(-3) = 4 gives students a distinct advantage when they come to sketch the graph.

What did that SM 2 lady say again? Was it anything about VCAA just making new shit up and failing to tell anyone?

Q1 and Q3 were the warm-ups. They are utterly disgraceful, Q3 in particular, but they are essentially standard. They amount to judgment calls, and it is common knowledge that VCAA possesses the judgment, and the empathy, of the Dred Scott guys. But, what do we do when VCAA entirely ignores their own writing?

The last question on the exam, Q10, was concerned with the distance between a pair of “skew lines”, and students did badly.⁷ Perhaps, as the assessor-narrator suggests, this was due to students running out of time. Perhaps, however, it was because the students had no reason to believe that such skew distance was examinable: vector distances are nowhere mentioned in the Study Design and, although the SD support materials contain distance questions, they contain no such skew distance examples.⁵

God knows why VCAA hasn’t simply clarified this, but they haven’t. But the assessor-narrator knows where the fault lies:

Some students did not seem to know what was meant by the term “skew lines”.

Yeah, the students and/or their teachers are to blame. It is entirely irrelevant that the term “skew” does not make a single appearance in VCAA’s Study Design.⁶

The final, worst example is Q5. This question concerned the curve given by over , which is rotated around the x-axis “to form a solid of revolution”. Yeah, yeah, we’ve pointed it out many, many times. But not, seemingly, enough. The assessor-narrator notes,

However, some students did not read the question carefully and seemed to assume that a surface area was to be found.

And you guys really have no idea why?

Is this plain arrogance, or monumental stupidity? Both?

It is important to note is that it is not the assessor-narrators to blame, or at least not only them. Sure, there is zero excuse for spouting such nonsense and such nastiness as if it were otherwise, and perhaps they played a role in idiotic grading decisions. But they did not write the exams. They did not vet the exams. They are not primarily responsible for clarifying non sequiturs and correcting blatant errors that have been repeated without comment for years. So, who to blame?

David Howes. David is acting CEO of VCAA and, David, the buck stops with you. For the next month or so, VCAA is still your circus. Please control your clowns.

 

1) Indeed too much transparency, if one includes the 2024 exam leaks, but no joke was intended.

2) Yeah, yeah, another set-up for another joke. Get over it. 

3) Albeit not good enough. The Meet the Assessors MAV sleaze has to end.

4) This is your periodic reminder that, while Monash University has treated the VCAA-VCE situation with admirable seriousness, the University of Melbourne continues to not give a stuff. 

5) The textbooks, at least the 2023 editions, are of little help. Cambridge shows the skew distance technique (with valid but confusing justification), but Jacaranda and Nelson do not. Jacaranda mentions skew lines but does nothing with them. Nelson seemingly contains no distance questions whatsoever, and seemingly never mentions skew lines.

6) Blog commenters noted the use of “skew”, although they were not so sure that it would have caused confusion. The assessor-narrator’s comment suggests that it did. Ironically, it seems plausible that the term was included to be helpful, to clean up on the Study Design and support material being so vague on vector distances.

7) While we’re here, the condition in the question preamble that m ≠ -4/5 is unnecessary and silly.