Review of exam mix-up finds fault in authority’s website, memos to teachers

A “perfect storm” of breakdowns within the education system led to students at nine Queensland schools learning about the wrong Roman emperor in their Year 12 studies, a report has found.

Students at seven state schools and two non-state schools were taught about Augustus instead of Julius Caesar this year, with many of the 140 students finding out about the mix-up just days before their final ancient history exam in October.

However, every student affected passed the subject, a government spokesperson said, with more than 40 per cent receiving an A grade.

A panel assembled by the Queensland government released their report on Tuesday, finding a mixture of communication breakdowns at the schools and the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) led to the issue.

The report said memos about the change of subject were sent to all Queensland schools in 2023 and 2024 and the principals of the nine schools involved acknowledged they were received.

In some schools, personnel changes and ineffective handovers led to a knowledge gap. In other cases, teachers assumed the test would be on Augustus because that was the subject for the previous five years, and they did not expect it to change in the final year of the syllabus.

“This, together with the retention of the mock examinations and resources on Augustus, and the absence of Julius Caesar resources on the QCAA website, amplified a confirmation bias that Augustus was the external examination topic in 2025,” the panel wrote.

A spokesperson for one of the schools named in the report, St Teresa’s Catholic College on the Sunshine Coast, told this masthead in October that it had caught the problem earlier, and its students had been learning about Julius Caesar during the semester of the exam.

Many schools admitted their quality assurance and supervision processes were not followed, leading to the oversight.

The investigation found the QCAA did not mitigate the potential for the problem, with school staff complaining the messaging did not match the importance of the subject change.

One issue identified was that teachers could not sign up for subject-specific memos from the QCAA, so some ignored the memos altogether.

The QCAA website was also found wanting, with school staff complaining that it lacked a single page where all necessary information for a subject could be found.

“Both QCAA and school personnel from both the affected and non-affected schools made consistent and constant references to the usability of the QCAA website,” the report said.

All affected schools told the panel they believed if schools had to register for the assessment ahead of time, as is done for English and some other subjects, the problem would have been avoided.

The panel found the QCAA could have played a stronger role, and suggested a validation or registration process that would occur in the year before and the year of the exam “thereby reducing the risk that staff transitions create a knowledge gap in the school”.

On Tuesday, Langbroek said he had told the QCAA, the Non-State School Accreditation Board, the Queensland Catholic Education Commission and the Department of Education “to ensure lessons are learned from this unacceptable error, to ensure history never repeats itself”.

He highlighted changes to the QCAA board made in November, which he said brought fresh skills needed following the ancient history saga.

Union leaders Cresta Richardson and Terry Burke were both dumped from the board, replaced with Rockhampton principal Leesa Jeffcoat and hotelier and former Advance Australia lobbyist James Power.

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