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.
The exam reports of earlier English studies were anodyne but conventional. The two reports for the current course are notably ‘conceptual’ and apparently ‘explicit’ by comparison but lacking in meaningful discussion of the unconventional emphases of some questions and their marking.
The exam questions, the criteria on the exam paper and the exam reports disclose very little about how difficult issues in marking are dealt with and what directions are given to markers. The published criteria for assessment are obvious and uninformative but how they are interpreted is not discussed or disclosed. The description of levels of performance in the Expect Qualities offer very little information.
The hints about marking processes given in exam reports and Meet the Chief Assessor sessions (‘the marking is holistic’, ‘questions have multiple entry points’, ‘marks are never deducted’) do not allow one to infer a coherent position on marking processes as one could with exam reports about past versions of the study. One needs some clear direction about how various issues are dealt with in the current marking, preferably with annotated examples to demonstrate the interpretation of criteria and levels in action.
The usual lack of examples of student work is at odds with the approach used for dealing with the challenges of the new Section B. There have been some 26 stellar examples of Section B responses published for 2024 and 2025. But as I have argued in the following blogs, these examples are not informative or helpful for teaching, and they are the only full scripts published this century. (There were probably none published in the 1990s but I have read those reports.) There has been nothing close to a full Section A or C response published this quarter century. Why is the approach to the new Section B so different?
Can we learn anymore from another set of stellar Section B exam responses in 2025 than in 2024?
The Section B examples in the VCE English exam reports of 2024 and 2025?
As there is hardly any publication of student work for Sections A and C, it make meaningful discussion of issues in assessment even more important, but such discussion is lamentably lacking.
I will discuss some of the problems with the English exam about which some frank discussion by the VCAA would be valuable and welcome.
The slant of Section A questions
A narrow notion of conceptual or thematic questions as most appropriate for text study is currently the new rule, and there are a number of problems with this approach. The questions set currently are abstract and conceptual in that they eschew referring to characters, plot or setting and are instead based on the ‘ideas’ of writers and ‘themes’ such as justice, conflict, morality and truth. This thematic approach spread over forty questions looks very generalised rather than focussed and specific. It is commonly possible to use a set thematic question for another set texts as the questions are so little grounded in the text itself. And abstract generality is the signal weakness of current student’s writing on Section A texts.
In recent years the thematic approach has been diversified with two unconventional approaches in the form of quotation questions and How questions. These question types seem to be offered to give a certain text specificity through quotation questions and a strategic and literary focus in How questions. Both of these unconventional kinds of text questions lead to complexities, ambiguities and contradictions which are not mentioned or dealt with in feedback from the exam.
Quote questions
The status of the quote in quote questions is unclear, and the quotes build a different level of challenge for students and markers in comparison with the routine theme questions. It is unclear for instance what students are expected to do with a quote in discussing the following example question.
‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’
Conscience is inescapable in Macbeth.
The quote in such questions poses dangers for students in that they can misunderstand it, misattribute it and make little or no use of it. What are markers to do when the quote in such questions can provoke such weaknesses? As usual, there has been no recognition of or guidance with these problems in responding to and marking.
In response to a question about the status of the quote in such questions, the Chief Assessor has stated that it is the ‘convention’ that student only have to make some use of the quote. We are presumably to infer that there are no consequences for these other evident weaknesses (‘marks are never deducted’) if they deal with the substance of the question which is the proposition. We are not told what the consequences there are for not making any reference to or use of the quote which in my experience is not uncommon.
How does the simplistic motto that marks are never deducted cover the situation of no reference to the quote in a quote question?
This is a not insignificant opacity in the marking. In the absence of any guidance, one would advise students to be careful in quote questions to make sure they understand the quote and know where it comes from and what it applies to if they are to choose such a questions. But according to the Chief Assessor there are no difficulties with quote questions, and the conventions can go without saying. One suspects there are other such unstated conventions that should be made explicit. One would be pleased to learn more about the ‘conventions’ of the English marking. These conventions are not discussed in past exam feedback.
The comments that marks are never deducted and the convention and that any use (be it accurate or inaccurate) is required to answer the whole question were elicited by questions sent to the VCAA Pilot Professional Learning presentation by the Chief Assessor on the exam of 2025. The first such session on the exam of 2024 can be viewed with transcript on the website. It is a significant indication of the continuing opacity of the VCAA exam processes that the second session on the exam of 2025 was presented (unlike the presentation for 2024) for one time only with no recording or transcript. The results of the pilot program seems to be constriction of the Chief Assesssor sessions.
How questions
On one hand trying to answer How question is banal and empty.
How does Shakespeare explore conscience in Macbeth?
Answer: he tells the story showing the characters of Macbeth and his wife and the consequences of murdering Duncan on both of them. The How form of the questions means nothing in such a response. One wonders what the convention is for marking responses to How questions that offer nothing more than such a response.
Such How questions are usually framed inappropriately because the play is not a matter of Shakespeare exploring conscience in Macbeth. He is exploring the story and character of Macbeth and in doing so what can be called ‘themes’ like conscience can be said to arise. A more conventional question focussed on what happens and why in the play would better reflect play and how it is written. Conventional kinds of what happens and why type questions have a significantly different to the slant from thematic questions in that they focus attention of the substance of character and plot rather than the abstraction of a theme.
And if a student can see things other than the most obvious is such How question it is very difficult for them to deal with these illusive issues. In my experience as an external marker, most students ignore the how part of How questions and discuss the thematic proposition (the impact of conscience on Macbeth) and do little or nothing with the How issue. One wonders how How questions are dealt with in a marking regime where marks are, we are told, never deducted. What happens if students make no reference to how in a How questions? Are there any consequences for this deficit in a How response?
According to exam feedback current questions cause no problems and there are no difficulties in assessment of Section A responses. And the exam reports imply that the judicious slant of current conceptual questions is improving student performance.
As someone who has not had the benefit of the Chief Assessors guidance one has significant problems dealing with students’ responses to the current Section A quote and how questions. And rather than being impressed by the conceptual rigour of current student responses, one finds them flatly generalised and abstract. One would like some candid feedback about what students do in the exam and how markers are directed to deal with the challenges in students’ responses.
The complications of the Section B task
A number of fateful decisions were made in designing the Creating a text segment of the study that have had a great impact on the exam task. Specifying a theme for study and presenting a statement about it (in this case called a Framework) opens up a real problem in examining. If students know the theme in advance the study is likely to turn into the preparation of an exam response. This prefigured theme becomes a problem for students, teachers and markers.
To what extent can students (at the direction of their teachers) have preprepared material and perhaps whole answers ready to unload in the exam? And won’t the prefigured theme be in danger of facilitating varying degrees of plagiarism?
These problems clearly shaped the design of the requirements of the exam task in that it specifies the constraint of a set title for all students doing a Framework and requires the use one of three pieces of stimulus in their response. These requirements were clearly designed to prevent the unloading of preprepared or plagiarised responses in the exam. Given the problems caused by the design of the study, the constrictions of the exam task are intelligible and necessary requirements.
It should have been made clear (and in advance) that there would be a quite strict expectation that students would write a response specifically focussed on the set title and stimulus, and that to fail to focus on the title and the stimulus would be (in the exam report rhetoric) to not do the task, which means to not do the task inadequately.
No such directions were made about this specifically and intentionally constrained task, and it was reasonable to assume that the degree of focus on the set title and piece of stimulus would be a significant issue in the assessment. The issue is made more difficult by the marked breadth of the titles and some of the stimulus.
We learn from what little feedback there has been from the marking of Section B that there is no issue about the ‘use of relevant idea(s) drawn from one Framework of Ideas, the title provided and at least one piece of stimulus material’. We learn nothing about what it means to be relevant to the title and a piece of stimulus.
As feedback we are offered 26 full stellar examples of student work. As I have argued in other blogs, there is little that can be usefully learned from these examples in that handling the title and the stimulus is of little importance in the annotation of these scripts, and that they seem preprepared approaches and based on material can be very readily hooked on to the very broad titles and a pieces of stimulus.
The set title and stimuli are shown by the examples to be so general as to be little constraint and that students can expect substantial and perhaps full use to preprepared material in the exam. Turning the exam task into one of linking a preprepared approach and material is a significant complication of the examining process. The set tasks are of little constraint on what students offer as a response. Almost all the stellar examples are reflective personal narrative and there is very little propositional thinking in the examples.
According to the Chief Assessor there is no issue of relevance in the marking of Section B and that the issue of relevance and preparation is the same for Section B as for Sections A and C. This is a remarkably implausible claim because the ways in which students can prepare for Sections A and C are very different as the set tasks are very different. Because students can prepare content in advance, relevance to the set question is critical in Section A to prevent the unloading of preprepared essays. Because the substance of a Section C task is unknown, students have to prepare in generalised terms. The exam reports actually disparage generalised discussion of persuasive devices and instead promote a focus on the specifics of a set text as the equivalent constraint to relevance in Section A. Section B on the other hand has such broad prompts and the requirement for relevance seems to be so loose, students and teachers can reasonably expect to hang a preprepared essay on the task. One suspects that a significant number of students are currently unloading preprepared response in Section B.
In Section B relevance is the first issue in the criteria but it is difficult to see that relevance means much in the stellar examples, and there would seem nothing in the example responses to discourage the expectation of being able to unload preprepared material and even a whole preprepared piece in the exam.
This situation with Section B is unfortunate and inappropriate. An exam task should not be (and should not allowed to be) the unloading of a preprepared, carefully tutored or even plagiarised response.
