Tasmanian exam authority to review processes after sixth exam paper found to contain an error

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Tasmania’s school exam authority will review its processes after errors were found on six grades 11 and 12 end of year exam papers this year. Tasmanian Assessment, Standards and Certification said it would review its checking process and confirmed artificial intelligence was not used in the process of writing or checking of these exams.

Transcript

00:00Year 11 and 12 exams can be an anxious time, and for some students in Tasmania, this year's

00:07exam period has been even more stressful than usual.

00:10There have been mistakes in six exams, ranging from minor typos to data errors to mistakes

00:16in stimulus material that made questions harder or impossible to answer.

00:21The mistakes were in the Physics, Food and Nutrition, Chemistry, Biology, English and

00:25Accounting exams.

00:28Students and parents have reported that the mistakes rattled some students, threw them

00:31off for the rest of their exam, or in some cases, meant they wasted time on those questions

00:36when they could have moved on to other answers.

00:38One teacher told the Education Union the Food and Nutrition exam was borderline disgraceful.

00:43I think we're all disappointed, the staff in the office are disappointed, obviously

00:48the exam setters and the critics are disappointed, and it's certainly not something that we want

00:53to happen.

00:54For some exams, supervisors were able to tell the students about the errors during the exam,

00:59but some other mistakes were only identified near the end of exam time.

01:03So then the marking teams will look at those and determine how they might deal with those

01:08questions.

01:09So it may be that that question is not counted, or it may be that students who've attempted

01:16that question, their answers are looked at slightly differently.

01:22Exams are reviewed by a team of critics and then proofread before students sit them.

01:26We will look at that both internally and then externally to make sure that the processes

01:33that we've put in place are the right ones.

01:36Tasmania isn't the only state with exam stuff-ups this year.

01:40The head of Victoria's exam authority has resigned after some exam questions were inadvertently

01:45posted online before the exam period there.

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