By Monty Jacka

Copyright abc

An independent report into Tasmania’s senior school exams has blamed understaffing for a series of mistakes found in last year’s exam papers.

There were 11 errors across seven of the Tasmanian Certificate of Education (TCE) exams in 2024, ranging from spelling mistakes to incorrect numbering.

Following the exams, which are taken each year by students across years 11 and 12, there were reports of students being “rattled” and confused by the mistakes.

Auditors Deloitte was contracted to complete an independent review and investigation into the exam development process by Tasmanian Assessment, Standards and Certification (TASC).

That report, released this week, found there was insufficient staffing at TASC, which created excessive pressure on staff and was likely a contributing factor to the errors.

It noted that while the exam process used by TASC was generally sufficient, there were “minor deviations” from the process by staff, including incorrectly completing feedback forms.

“Based on our observations and discussions, we noted there was insufficient resourcing at TASC considering the workload and quantum of exams to be developed each year,” the report states.

“This resourcing issue creates a higher risk of potential error in exam content development, which can be compounded when there is insufficient training of exam setters and critics … or critical time constraints.”

It made 34 total recommendations for TASC to improve its processes, including conducting a workload analysis, improving salaries to attract more staff and providing examiners and critics with formal training.

Chair ‘confident’ safeguards will be in place for upcoming tests

About 5,000 students from across Tasmania are currently preparing to sit this year’s edition of the TCE exams.

TASC chair Sally Darke said the board fully endorsed the review’s findings and had already begun implementing some of the recommendations.

“It did actually identify some areas where we can further enhance the effectiveness of the processes and make sure we have the right resources there,” Ms Darke told ABC Mornings.

“We are well on the way in regards to the improvements that need to be made to ensure we have reliable assessments that support student outcomes.”

She said TASC employed “many sessional staff” to support the exam period and that it had the “right resourcing at the moment”.

Ms Darke assured students, teachers and parents that every effort has been made to ensure this year’s exams do not have any errors.

“We’ve made the changes and we are really comfortable that has significantly reduced the likelihood of errors,” Ms Darke said.

Some errors were identified, but not corrected

The report found a total of 11 mistakes across seven of the 2024 exam papers — Chemistry, English, Food and Nutrition, Physics, Accounting, Biology, and Economics.

Some of the errors included the word “acidified” being misspelt as “acidied”, a key number in a diagram being incorrectly written as 10cm instead of 7cm, and a codon chart used in biology being written incorrectly.

According to Deloitte’s analysis, some of the errors were identified during the draft process but were not corrected in the final version of the examination.

Others went through the entire draft process without being noticed, and some errors were added during the draft process to questions that were initially correct.

For some of the faulty papers, a clarification was written on the board during the exam and announced to students, while others were not identified until near the end of the testing period.