Students across Victoria have already endured the stress leading up to tackling their exams in Business Management, Specialist Maths and Legal Studies, as part of their end-of-year Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) qualification – but questions are now being asked about whether an error has led to some students accessing the answers before they undertook the tests.
The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) website hosts PDF versions of sample cover pages, which are the initial pages of VCE examinations that provide instructions to students – and users web forum Reddit discovered that some of these exam cover pages on the site also included hidden questions written in transparent text.
The highlighted text could then be copied and pasted into a text editor to reveal the questions, which some users say were identical to the questions in the 2024 VCE exams.
The PDFs have been replaced on the VCAA website.
VCAA says no students gained an advantage from a production error that leaked sample exam questions and has denied that a mistake, allowing students to see questions on sample exams, has compromised the VCE.
Legal studies student Millie sat her exam and says a case study on the leaked exam questions was exactly the same a case study on the real exam, except that one name had been changed.
“With legal studies, it’s very easy to figure out what kind of questions are going to be on the case study, which I think is super unfair,” she says.
VCAA chief executive Kylie White says that, although similar exam questions could have appeared in the hidden text, they were not identical to actual exam questions
“This year unfortunately there was a production issue … and some sample material was included,” White says.
“We discovered that there was an issue before the written exams commenced and we were able to then review our exams and check that our exam questions were different to the sample material.
“The VCE examinations haven’t been compromised, and all students can be very confident about completing their exams.”
