The education minister has sacked the entire board of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority following the 2024 exam debacle. A total of 65 VCE exams were compromised with questions leaked online before students sat the test, The government has accepted all the recommendations from a review into the blunders, but it will take more than a year to fully implement them.
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00:00VCE graduate Caitlin Nguyen is forging ahead with a double degree at Monash University
00:09after all five of her exams were compromised last year.
00:13I do remember feeling quite worried because I was unsure about what was going to happen.
00:19The Education Minister is still dealing with the fallout after 65 exams were affected,
00:25today announcing the first results of a major review.
00:28The status quo of the VCAA will no longer cut it.
00:32The Minister says he's accepted all eight recommendations,
00:36which include disbanding the entire VCAA board and installing an interim board,
00:42the appointment of a new chief executive, a collection of back-up exams in case of errors,
00:48and the removal of cover sheets from student access.
00:51This was an unmitigated, unauthorised process that was undertaken and that has led to where we are today.
01:01So there will be no exam cover sheets going forward.
01:04The review found the cover sheet error followed production delays, which caused staff to fall behind.
01:10It concertinated at that point and as a result something was done that shouldn't have been done.
01:18Some of the uploaded covers contained transparent text, which could be viewed when pasted into a text editor.
01:25The last three years of the VCE have seen errors and while the government says it wants students to have full confidence in the process,
01:32the lead reviewer says human error will always be a factor.
01:36The likelihood of issues this year are as diminished as they could possibly be.
01:45It wasn't the first time, it wasn't the second, it was the third time it happened in this state.
01:49The review should have been done after the first so we didn't have the third occasion of students missing out on the opportunities
01:54and facing the extra stress during their exams.
01:56But Katelyn is satisfied to put the debacle behind her.
02:00I believe they've learnt their lesson.
02:02The second stage of the review is expected to be released later this year.