This post is a reflection on the updates from Helen Billett and Kellie Heintz at the VATE conference on November 23rd. These comments are based on DRAFT discussions of the examination. The actual sample examination will be published on Monday December 11th and details might change.
Now that we’ve got that disclaimer out of the way, let’s take a look at some of what was discussed during the conference, and what it means for 2024 Year 12 students. I’ll break this brief post down into Section A, B, and C, which align to Reading and Responding to Texts, Creating Texts, and Analysing Argument respectively. Once the actual Sample Examination is published in a couple of weeks, I’ll write a longer post.
Section A
Section A is mostly business as usual. Students will need to use the skills they’ve learned throughout Units 1-4, but particularly:
This Section of the examination is the analytical essay response to a set text. As per previous study designs, students will choose from one of their two studied texts (Unit 3 OC 1 or Unit 4 OC 1), and then choose from two questions.
The questions in the new examination look like they’ll be simplified, with the following example given:
‘Revenge and hatred are the driving forces in this text.’ Discuss
Example question style based on ‘In Cold Blood’
Section B
Section B is of course the one we’ve all been waiting for since it’s the “new” Area of Study (as opposed to the slight changes to Sections A and B). Earlier this year we saw “stimulus material” appear in the VCAA Advice for Teachers pages for English and EAL, which gave an indication of what the examination might look like.
It seems as though those suppositions were mostly correct. Here’s what I said about it back in June:
Although we don’t know what the examination for 2024 looks like – and we won’t, until after the 2023 exam – we can hazard a guess now that a stimulus or prompt will play a part. Back when this study design first rolled out, I had conversations speculating about the need for some sort of unseen material such as a prompt in the exam. That’s because otherwise students would be able to enter the exam with a totally preprepared response, which unfairly advantages some pupils.
Without a crystal ball, I can predict that Section B of the 2024 examination will have stimulus materials similar to the examples for the VCAA advice for teachers. I’d guess that they may be shorter than the examples on the website, perhaps more like the quotes I listed earlier, or somewhere between. They’ll have to be accessible and not contain any overly complex vocabulary, in-keeping with everything else in the exam.
https://leonfurze.com/2023/06/04/creating-texts-stimulus-materials/
At the conference session, the stimulus materials discussed for Section B were very short, and included an image. For example these stimuli for the Framework of Personal Journeys with the unseen title “The Arrival”:
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu
“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late” – Shakespeare
The stimuli in the actual exam might be longer: we’ll find out when we see the sample in December. It’s worth quoting the most important Section B slide in its entirety:
Section B will consist of creating a text and will be worth a total of 20 marks.
VCAA slides – VATE Conference session 23rd November 2024. Emphasis mine. NB: These slides predate the official release of the sample examination and the information is subject to change.
Students will be required to create one written text. For the purposes of this task, a ‘written text’ does not include song, poetry or verse. In creating their text, students must use the unseen title provided, relevant idea(s) from at least one unseen stimulus and be connected to one of the Frameworks of Ideas. The text must be developed with a clear purpose(s) – to explain, to express, to argue, to reflect – and should be an effective and cohesive piece of writing. Students should demonstrate fluency through the selection of vocabulary, text structure and language features, and employ an appropriate voice in their text.
The place of mentor texts is to provide access to ideas and inform the teaching of writing, but students will not be required to make explicit reference to them in the examination
If you’re not a member of the VCE Hub yet, make sure you check out all of the resources available for Units 1-4 including sample unit plans and videos for every outcome. The Hub will also be updated in December with stimulus material for the four Creating Text Frameworks, and information on the examination.
Section C
Like Section A, the final section of the examination is more of the same. Check out my other posts on VCE English and EAL 2023: Exploring Argument and Preparing for VCE English and EAL Unit 3/4: Analysing Argument for details on how to approach this Area of Study and its corresponding examination section.
Students will be faced with a single text with embedded images: no more confusion over whether they need to compare and contrast multiple texts, and no more “letters to the editor” or comment threads/responses from multiple authors.
The session highlighted the importance of paying attention to the Background Information. It will provide all the details needed to discuss audience, purpose, and context, and students must use that information in their response.
What does it mean for 2024 students?
After the session and the following day I had several conversations with teachers who thought the new examination format was lowering the stakes slightly compared to previous years.
I want you to think of this differently: the examination is not supposed to be high stakes.
Heresy, maybe, but although we treat the examination as the be-all-and-end-all of the VCE (and in some schools, the entire 7-12 English curriculum), it serves exactly one purpose: statistical moderation of the SAC results.
Your SACs can be as rigorous and sophisticated as you like, and can be highly contextualised dependent on your cohort. Your assessment tasks can be based on film texts, popular contemporary novels, Classics, Greek tragedies, or whatever your students will respond to best. You can conduct them like tertiary Literature analyses, or under exam conditions (but you probably shouldn’t do that…).
But the examination has to be fair for the 45,000+ students across Victoria and overseas who sit the VCE English and EAL examination every year. That means it has to be accessible for students from every background, every level of literacy, every cultural and language demographic, every socio-economic status.
The sole purpose of the examination is to ensure that every student has a fair chance, whether they have access to tutors or not, or whether their teachers are employed on five times the salary of the teachers at the school in the next postcode. The internal rankings of your students, determined by the SACs, are moderated against the state cohort to ensure fairness in the assessment process.
That’s it.
Viewed like this, the examination is simple and accessible because it absolutely has to be. It’s not a slight to your more capable students: they’ll do well either way. Yes, the questions in Section A appear simplistic and generally only have one core concept to discuss. Yes, it looks like the stimulus material for Section B will be much shorter than the SAC suggestions in the Advice for Teachers. And yes, Section C is almost comically beige. Good.
Maybe with that all out in the open we can stop viewing the examination as the apotheosis of the English curriculum and teach Year 7s something other than analytical responses and TEEL. Many great schools I’ve worked with this year have been doing just that.
Got questions about the English exam or the 2024 study design? Or maybe you were at the conference and you think I’ve missed something important. Get in touch using the form below:
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