By Noel Towell, Carla Jaeger and Caroline Schelle
Workers at Victoria’s troubled school exam authority have been complaining of overwork and poor morale since 2022, as the state’s high school final exams have been dogged by errors for three successive years.
The state’s top education bureaucrat has now acknowledged that the performance of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) has worsened over time, as a fresh review into the authority is due to get under way.
This year’s VCE exams have been marred by the leaking of questions.Credit: Joe Armao
But the Education Department has rejected any suggestion that the VCAA – which was plunged into crisis this month after questions from VCE exams were inadvertently published in advance – had been starved of funds or staff.
In the wake of the exam leak debacle, stakeholders in the education sector are demanding answers.
The workplace issues at the authority boiled over in late 2022, just before that year’s VCE tests became mired in controversy when errors were discovered on the specialist maths paper, as budget cuts imposed by the state government across the public service began to bite.
The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) requested a formal workplace review, complaining that excessive workloads and unfilled vacancies were having an impact on the mental health and family lives of public servants working at the authority.
VCAA management and the Education Department responded with a series of meetings to address the union’s concerns, but documents seen by The Sunday Age indicate that union members at the authority remained unhappy about workloads in late 2023.
Earlier that year, a union bulletin highlighted concerns about “excessive hours, workload creep, the physical and mental wellbeing of staff and management behaviour impacting staff morale”.
Questions for VCE exams were inadvertently uploaded to the VCAA website on sample test material.
A “root and branch” review of VCAA – ordered by Education Minister Ben Carroll – will be the third review into the authority’s operations in as many years.
The state opposition will this week push for yet another inquiry into the VCAA’s conduct, this time by the Victorian Ombudsman’s office.
After errors were found in maths exams in 2022, consulting giant Deloitte was hired to look into the process of setting the tests, and when more problems emerged in 2023’s Chinese and chemistry exams the state government ordered another review, led by John Bennett, former chief executive of the NSW Board of Studies.
The Bennett Review made six high-level recommendations to improve the exam-setting process, with a particular emphasis on the maths test.
Two of the mathematicians who helped expose the flaws in the exam this week told The Sunday Age that they had seen big improvements as a result.
But neither the Deloitte nor the Bennett reviews addressed workplace issues, funding or resources at the VCAA.
Department of Education secretary Jenny Atta conceded before a parliamentary committee last week that former VCAA chief executive Kylie White, who resigned last weekend last week amid fallout from the leaks, had been “working to turn around performance issues” at the authority before her abrupt departure.
“There are a lot of fundamentals that go into building a high performing agency, and clearly we can conclude at this stage that there’s been a deterioration over time,” Atta told the committee.
A departmental spokesman rejected any suggestion that problems with exams stemmed from a lack of funding to the VCAA, saying the authority’s full-time headcount had increased from 190 in 2018 to 236 this year.
A former VCAA board member, who requested anonymity to speak frankly, defended the workers at the authority.
“There are some really good people there that do a lot of really good work,” they said.
“The volume of the work they do – sometimes these mistakes happen.”
But the former board member added that they supported the fresh review given the seriousness of the leak issue.
“It has to be taken seriously, it impacts kids and parents,” they said.
“With any review, you’d hope it’d be constructed so you find what the root causes are to provide solutions to people.”
Details of the review remain sparse, with Carroll telling The Sunday Age on Saturday that its first task would be to discover why this year’s exam cycle went so badly wrong.
“I have ordered a root-and-branch review of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority,” the minister said.
“The first job of this review will be getting to the bottom of what has happened in the 2024 exams.”
Maths teacher John Kermond, who has had frequent dealings with the VCAA over the years, said he believed the authority’s “cultural” and “competency” problems had improved significantly recently.
But Kermond said there were questions to be answered about the effort of VCAA staff to change the questions on this year’s exams once it became known that they had been leaked online.
“I wonder whether subject managers did what Kylie [White] asked them to do in a competent manner,” he said.
White could not be contacted for comment.
Marty Ross, one of the mathematicians who uncovered exam mistakes, has been a frequent critic of the authority, writing recently that “the VCAA has always had more than its fair share of clowns”.
But Ross too said the delivery of the maths exams had improved dramatically as White implemented the Bennett review’s recommendation, with the plan to involve Monash University mathematicians in the exam-setting process a big development.
Ross said the VCAA’s attitude to criticism and feedback from educators and outside experts had improved under White’s leadership.
“Before Kylie White came it was a farce and after Kylie White came it was excellent,” he said.
Ross called on the authority’s new chief executive, Marcia Devlin, to continue the reform work.
“The Bennett review is still there, and a lot of things are under way,” Ross said.
“Hopefully the new CEO will see the merits of this and support it.
“We cross our fingers and hope.”
Jess Wilson, the Victorian Liberals’ education spokeswoman, will try to win crossbench support in state parliament this week for an ombudsman’s inquiry into the leaks.
“Only a truly independent and comprehensive investigation conducted by the Victorian Ombudsman will get to the bottom of what has gone wrong and restore integrity and community confidence in VCE assessments,” Wilson said.
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