A couple readers have kindly (?) alerted us to the fact that Victoria’s new F-10 curriculum is now out. Yay. And yeah, this should probably be a WitCH but, really, what shouldn’t? To steal from First Dog, the list of things that shouldn’t be a WitCH is quite short. Continue reading “Victoria’s New F-10 Curriculum is Out”
Not total class, but a ton more class than we’ve ever witnessed from VCAA.
This is a lot of times to write about one multiple choice question, but it is important. A month or so ago we posted a PoSWW on a 2022 Queensland MCQ exam question, for which the accompanying exam report indicated the wrong answer. In a second post last week, we noted that QCAA had updated their exam report, to indicate the correct answer and including a footnote flagging that the correction had been made. QCAA has now gone further. Continue reading “QCAA Shows Some More Class”
Last month we posted a PoSWW on a 2022 Queensland MCQ exam question, for which the accompanying exam report indicated the wrong answer. It is depressingly unclear why QCAA had not been previously alerted to the error, but a couple weeks after our PoSWW appeared, QCAA updated their exam report: in the amended report QCAA indicates the correct answer (p 27), and they also indicate in a footnote that the correction had been made.
For QCAA to have done this was professional and classy. It was also important. The uncorrected report invited, effectively demanded, a mathematical misconception (on inflection points); by correcting the report, QCAA ensured that their exam-report could no longer be relied upon as an authority for this misconception.
In Victoria, it’s different. Continue reading “The Cost of VCAA’s Dissembling”
I have come to realise the need to acknowledge a major error on this blog. Errors will occur, of course, but when they occur it is important to admit them and to own them, to make amends to the extent that is possible. Continue reading “Acknowledging and Apologising For an Error”
The difficulty of critiquing VCAA mathematics exams is capturing the variety and the frequency and the depth of the flaws, and then summing the overall effect, the fundamentally impoverished approach to mathematics and its testing. Documenting straight out errors is not overly difficult, and even non sequitur questions are manageable: the error or weirdness typically speaks for itself. Capturing the ubiquitous awfulness of the writing, and the intrinsic meaninglessness of many of the questions, however, is harder. Continue reading “VCAA’s Greater Literary Offenses”
One of the all-time great literary wallops, by one of the all-time great writers, is Mark Twain’s Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses:
Cooper’s art has some defects. In one place in “Deerslayer,” and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction — some say twenty-two. In “Deerslayer”, Cooper violated eighteen of them. Continue reading “VCAA’s Lesser Literary Offenses”
The above was described by a VCAA apparatchik as a “beautiful poster”. Proving, it seems, that beauty is in the eye of the beholden.
A few days ago, the QEDcat received an email from a Victorian teacher, someone we don’t know and who, it seems, doesn’t follow this blog. The teacher and his colleagues had been discussing a rather weird exercise and he had wanted our opinion on the exercise. We were happy to oblige of course, and the issue turned out to be related to this screw-up. We also took the opportunity to suggest that the teacher’s choice was either to ask us or to ask the VCAA. The teacher replied,
Yep. One of the other teachers said we should check what vcaa say. But I actually want to know the correct answer.
Which is where we are. A ratbag blogger is considered, correctly, to be a more reliable authority than the actual Authority.
This is not one we’ve had time to look at but it seems important. We don’t intend to comment but we’re providing this post as a forum for discussion.
In November last year, VCAA released its draft of the new mathematics study design, to begin in 2023. The draft is no longer linked on VCAA’s website, but we wrote about the draft here, here and here. The current study design, ostensibly in operation until the end of 2022, is here. Continue reading “Discussion: VCAA’s Blunt Implement”
VCAA’s corona-compliant study design for 2020 has just appeared, here. We’ve had no chance to look at it yet. We’ll be curious to see the response.