Education minister says errors in legal studies, biology exams are being worked through
Jo Palmer says strategies "are always put in place" to ensure errors on senior secondary school exam papers do not affect students' results.
In short:
Tasmania's Education Minister Jo Palmer has moved to reassure students affected by errors on their Tasmanian Certificate of Education exam papers that strategies are in place to ensure the errors do not affect their results.
It comes after errors with the biology and legal studies exams this week.
What's next?
The education regulator, Tasmanian Assessment, Standards and Certification (TASC), says it is working through the issues.
Strategies "are always put in place" to ensure senior secondary school exam errors do not affect end-of-year results, Tasmanian Education Minister Jo Palmer said, after an outcry over two subjects.
Ms Palmer told a budget estimates hearing on Thursday she had received advice about the issues, after parents and students told the ABC of their concerns about the legal studies and biology Tasmanian Certificate of Education (TCE) exams held on Monday.
Ms Palmer said education regulator, Tasmanian Assessment, Standards and Certification (TASC) was working with legal studies exam setters and critics "to determine the impact of a discrepancy" in which the term "community service orders" was used in place of "community corrections order" on the legal studies exam paper.
Meanwhile, students who sat the biology exam received a replacement information sheet from a previous course, which had not been tailored to match the current course.
"I'm advised there were those two errors and certainly strategies are always put in place to ensure it doesn't impact end of year results,"Ms Palmer said.
TASC also confirmed on Thursday that a third issue with the economics paper would make two answers acceptable for one of the questions.
Tasmanian students have been studying for exams which have been held over the past two weeks. (ABC News: Maren Preuss)
Affected teachers, parents and students have told the ABC these instances "threw students off" and left them "very stressed out".
One legal studies teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, said the issue was not just a discrepancy, but referred to a very different sentencing option.
At the end of the 195-minute exam, he was met by panicked students who had picked up on the mistake.
"The sense that students have — and it's completely justifiable, and I would have felt the same way 20 years ago when I was doing my exam — would be that they've been let down by the teacher, the person who's been delivering the course all year," he said.
"Teachers and students are working towards this end goal of the exam ever since February and we're sort of in it together for nine-plus months."
While he said mistakes did happen and that TASC appeared to be "working wholeheartedly" to fix the error, it was an extremely disappointing outcome for students.
"We are pushing these students overly and implicitly to have these really rigorous standards; an error like this is really pretty bad,"he said.
"I think it does leave them finishing the year on quite a negative note."
TASC has said: "If a discrepancy is confirmed, a specific marking approach will be developed based on an assessment of how students have responded to the affected question."
Kobe Trezise says there was "a huge outrage" among Rosny College students following the legal studies exam. (Facebook: Rosny College)
'Huge outrage as soon as we left'
Kobe Trezise, a student at Rosny College in Hobart said while he was confident about most of the sections in his legal studies exam, he could not shake the unease he felt after spotting the mistake.
"I noticed the question in the writing section at the start of the exam and was immediately stressed out, which ended up throwing off my answers on the other topics," he said.
"It was a huge outrage as soon as we left, everyone was talking about it, about how stupid it was."
Ruby Donaldson says the biology exam error was disappointing. (ABC News: Maren Preuss)
Ruby Donaldson, a student at Guilford Young College, said she sat the biology exam on Monday and was given a new information sheet to replace the irrelevant one before the exam began.
She said she was concerned by reports that some other students were able to keep both information sheets.
"I was disappointed, I know it's not on the students, it's on TASC, but you put so much work in to your end of year exams, you're finishing up year 12, you want it to be correct,"she said.
TASC said on Tuesday it was "working to determine any impacts and put in place mitigations as required".
Fewer errors than last year: TASC
TASC chair Sally Darke assured concerned students that the exam errors would not affect their marks.
"We would prefer it not to have happened and we would prefer not to have administrative issues,"Ms Darke said.
Ms Darke says the exam errors would not affect students' marks. (ABC News: Hayden Smith)
In 2024, students also reported being "rattled" by 11 errors across seven of the TCE exams.
An independent report made 34 recommendations, which TASC accepted, including doing a workload analysis, improving salaries to attract more staff and providing examiners and critics with formal training.
"We did a review last year because we had 11 errors in the 2024 exams and we absolutely acknowledge that we would like to get it perfect, because it is stressful and we do have students who are anxious at the time of exams," Ms Darke said.
"So we will do everything we can so that we don't have any mistakes there.
"But we also have to understand that it's humans who are preparing those exams and when there's humans preparing there is a potential that we will get errors.
"We have had far less errors than last year."