August 9, 2026 by Doug McCurry from BooBook Education
Relevance and preprepared responses in Section B
There are a number of seriously problematic issues about the VCE English exam. The problems arise from the lack of direction about exam tasks, the opacity of the exam marking, and the lack of feedback from the exam marking.
One of her slides presented the following. It would be safer to paraphrase this.
The issue of preprepared responses was glanced at a couple of times in the presentation in terms of the impact of AI, students having luck in set questions and relevance. Adapting a piece prepared for the exam is considered as a matter of luck and relevance.
It is implied that the issue of preprepared responses is one of relevance, and that students being ‘off topic’ is treated the same way for Section B as for other sections. One would like to know the ‘conventions’ for dealing with ‘off topic’ responses in a marking mode in which ‘marks are never deducted’ but unfortunately the Chief Assessor does not elaborate on this convention.
The Chief Assessor implies that the issue of relevance is a primary concern (‘the first thing markers look at’) for all sections of the exam. She states that the relevance issue is the same for all sections of the exam and in all Expected Qualities. This claim is implausible because clearly the issue of relevance is different for each section of the exam. I explained why I think this claim is implausible in a previous blog.
According to the Chief Assessor there is no issue of relevance in the marking of Section B and that the issue of relevance and preparation is the same for Section B as for Sections A and C. This is a remarkably implausible claim because the ways in which students can prepare for Sections A and C are very different as the set tasks are very different. Because students can prepare content in advance, relevance to the set question is critical in Section A to prevent the unloading of preprepared essays. Because the substance of a Section C task is unknown, students have to prepare in generalised terms. The exam reports actually disparage generalised discussion of persuasive devices and instead promote a focus on the specifics of a set text as the equivalent constraint to relevance in Section A. Section B on the other hand has such broad prompts and the requirement for relevance seems to be so loose, students and teachers can reasonably expect to hang a preprepared essay on the task. One suspects that a significant number of students are currently unloading preprepared responses in Section B.
The Chief Assessor apparently sees no evidence of preprepared responses in the exam, and she seems to think there is no way you can know if material has been preprepared.
In Section A students are lucky if they can just slot preprepared material relevantly into an exam response because one believes that relevance to the set topic the first order issue in Section A. In Section C the consistent comments against persuasive device spotting in exam reports is an issue of relevance to the set passage and demonstrated understanding when there is no set question as the arbiter of relevance.
In Section B, on the other hand, when the topic has been known and preprepared and the set task is very general rather than specific then clearly prepreparing responses in terms of content and form is not only a realistic strategy, it is the optimal strategy.
As I have recommended in my Section A study guides, I think students should prepare language (that of the text and their own choice) to use in an exam answers rather than preparing sentences, paragraphs or whole essays for the exam. In Section C I would consistently focus students on the set text and explaining what it is doing rather than on persuasive devices or techniques at such.
Given the current implementation of Section B in the exam, one would encourage students to focus on a few preferred responses to the Framework and to consider the form in which they write best. I would encourage students to produce parts and whole pieces dealing with their preferred issues in the belief that they can hook their material onto a very broad topic.
Clearly the Chief Assessor is bemused by the suggestion that students might be preparing paragraphs and whole essays for use in the exam and signals disapproval of such exam preparation.
One wonders how many students with the encouragement of their teachers are making such specific preparations for Section B of the exam.
The Section B exam task was clearly designed to discourage preprepared responses, but the implementation of the design with general topics and a loose approach to relevance has encouraged them. The current exam tasks mean that prepreparing sections and whole responses would be the best way of approaching for Section B of the exam.
