The strengths and the weakness identified by BooBook markers in the English exam responses
September 8, 2026 by Doug McCurry from BooBook Education
The strengths and the weakness identified by BooBook markers in the English exam responses
Below is an aggregation or synthesis of the general comments of BooBook markers about student exam performance. Markers try to be encouraging as they can about the performance on students but their value as external markers (for students and teachers) is that they have no more to go on in making a judgement than the script they are reading.
Relevance and preprepared responses in Section B
August 9, 2026 by Doug McCurry from BooBook Education
Relevance and preprepared responses in Section B
The VCE English Chief Assessor seems to have been sent a question about students adapting preprepared Section B exam responses for the presentation about the exam report for 2025. We don’t know the substance of the question because the Chief Assessor denied or rejected the terms on which it was based.
Problems with the VCE English exam
July 13, 2026 by Doug McCurry from BooBook Education
Problems with the VCE English exam
There are a number of seriously problematic issues about the VCE English exam. The problems arise from the lack of direction about exam tasks, the opacity of the exam marking, and the lack of feedback from the exam marking.
Strengthening the Vocational Major and other alternative pathways
June 22, 2026 by Doug McCurry from BooBook Education
Strengthening the Vocational Major and other alternative pathways
One of the fundamental changes between the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) and the VCE Vocational Major (VM) was the requirement that VM students do the new GAT Part A literacy and numeracy tests like all other VCE students. The GAT assessment gives VM students an external assessment of their reading, writing and numeracy skills that adds some assessment rigour to the VM and strengths it.
Is the performance on the GAT strong or are the VCE standards low?
June 8, 2026 by Doug McCurry from BooBook Education
Is the performance on the GAT strong or are the VCE standards low?
It was claimed that the extension of the GAT to be a literacy and numeracy assessment in 2022 would have the significant benefit of giving the new Vocational Major (VM) course a degree of assessment rigor that contrasted with the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning that the VM superseded. But the laudable intention of adding some assessment rigor to a vocational pathway in the VCE was subverted by the decision about how to report the results of the GAT literacy and numeracy assessment for VM students.
