June 6, 2025 by Doug McCurry from BooBook Education

What can we infer from the Section B examples in the exam report?

It is praiseworthy that the exam report offered nine full examples of Section B responses.

There are also some 2400 words annotating these scripts, but there is almost no commentary on the performance of students in general or on the challenging issues in the task design.

There are many open and difficult questions about this new and unfamiliar task, and there is no discussion of these challenging issues in the exam report. Even more than usual, it seems the only way you can find out how the task is being marked is to be a marker. Given the unfamiliarity of this task, it is even more than usually unsatisfactory that there is no information about how the responses are marked or feedback from the marking.

The Executive Examiner has stated in a presentation on the website that the examples ‘explain how the Expected Qualities were applied by the examiners’. The annotations tell us in a very specific fashion why the nine stellar examples are judged to be outstanding, but the examples are of very little value when the real issues in marking are differences between scores of 4 to 6 or the differences between scores of 5 to 7. We learn little or nothing about the fundamental differences we need to understand from these stellar examples.

The examples and the annotations are very difficult to digest. I asked ChatGPT to summarise and synthesise the scripts and the annotations: its general summation of the annotations is as follows.

The annotations provide insight into the strengths of each piece, evaluating the effectiveness of figurative language, structure, and rhetorical strategies.

This is an accurate and telling summation in that the annotations are focussed on language and rhetorical strategies. There is very little commentary on the substantive content of the writing in relation to the Framework, the set titles and stimulus.

It might seem that this emphasis on language use is both appropriate for an English study and particularly appropriate for a section of an exam on writing. But the emphasis on ‘figurative language, structure, and rhetorical strategies’ seems to reduce attention in the annotations to the commentary of the writers the on substance of the title.

There is more information about the marking of Section B in the Executive Examiner’s recorded comments than in the exam report. The Executive Examiner implies in the presentation that all we need to know about the marking of the exam is the criteria on the exam paper and the quaintly name Expected Qualities. The criteria and EQs are blandly formulaic rather than informative.

In the presentation the Executive Examiner draws attention to the fact that the EQs for creating a text presents ideas relating to the framework that are relevant to the title as the first assessment criteria, and elaborates this emphasis as follows.

It's worth noting that the quality of the ideas presented in relation to the framework is the first consideration of the marker. This is a feature of the EQs in each section.

This is a crucial claim, and one fervently hopes that this is true of the marking, but it is not shown in the annotations of the stellar examples. There the emphasis is on ‘figurative language, structure, and rhetorical strategies’. Most of the examples are not distinguished by telling responses to stimulus or title, and some pay little real attention to the stimulus or the title.

Script 6 is something like a diary entry of youthful stress, but it is no more linked to the title ‘Finding My Way’ than by ending with playing a neglected piano. Example 8 is a mock advertisement for a commercial playgroup, but the context and purpose do not reflect the notion of there being a time to play.

There is a good deal of emoting and poeticising but little propositional analysis or argument in the examples. In terms of the traditional debating assessment there is a good deal of Manner in the examples and not much Matter. They are typified by ‘flair’ and ‘voice’ rather than insight or critical thinking.

What if anything do these examples mean for the two thirds of students destined for the medium and low levels in the exam?

In my view the stellar examples and the commentary on them have little meaning for the bulk of our students.

• With the bottom third of students, we are aiming for them to be able to express genuine thinking clearly, correctly and relevantly. The stellar examples are of no assistance with these matters.
• For the middle range students there is usually satisfactory control of language for basic purposes, but we hope to get these students to expand their understanding and insight in ways that may challenge and elevate their language.
• For the top third of students, we are encouraging them to go further and stretch themselves. There might be some profit for these higher-level students to consider the stellar examples, like there may be profit for them to consider the more ebullient mentor texts.

The link of the stellar examples to the stimulus and the titles are in some cases neither clear nor direct. Some could be preprepared pieces that are hooked on to the set task rather than written de novo in response to the set task.

Some unanswered questions

• Is the degree and the nature of the linkage of the response to the title and stimulus part of the assessment?
• Are merely nominal links a weakness?
• Is substantial focus on a stimulus and a title at a premium?
• Should student aim to use some more of less preprepared material in an exam response or should they expect to write a response to the specific stimulus and title?

The apparent emphasis on ‘figurative language, structure, and rhetorical strategies’ shown in the stellar examples suggests students should prepare for the exam by developing modes or forms that can be used for more or less any set task. The ideas of responding to Protest with a recipe, Play with an extended use of chess as a metaphor or a mock advert in the stellar examples look like they were prepared in advance.

To what extent should we be encouraging students to prepare modes of response and figurative language that can be applied to any Section B task?

Unfortunately, the stellar examples do not explain to us how the issues about the degree of linkage of a response to the stimulus and the title will be considered in the marking.

A note to the Examiners. Members of the Executive talk about high, medium and low levels, and in doing so present a graph that shows a medium range of 4-7 which covers more than 67% of students. It is a common and useful practice to think about assessing scripts with an initial question: ‘Is it high, medium or low’. But this question is only useful if the assumptions about these categories are clearly understood. It is usual to assume that the high/medium/low question refers to about a third of students are in each of the categories. There is no value in a medium category of more than two thirds of students as is shown in the graph of a normal distribution representing the three categories. It is comparatively easy for markers to identify the top and bottom 16% of scripts. The difficulty in marking to distinguish scripts in the range of 4 to 7. Given the distribution of scores for sections of the English paper, the middle category for VCE English should be scores of 5 and 6 only.