Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority
Government Agency
Industry Education
Founded 2001
Founder Government of Victoria
Headquarters Level 1, 2 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Key people

John Firth (CEO)

Christopher Wardlaw (Chair)
Services School curriculum
Student assessment
Education research
Revenue Increase A$51.33 million (2010) [1]
Increase A$157,732 (2010) [1]
Number of employees

195.9 (FTE)
340 (Casual)

3700 (Sessional)
Parent Department of Education and Early Childhood Development
Website http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) is a statutory authority of the Government of Victoria responsible for the provision of curriculum and assessment programs for students in Victoria, Australia. The VCAA is directly responsible to the Victorian Minister for Education through the VCAA Board.[2]

At the senior secondary level, the VCAA provides curriculum and assessment for the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) and the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL).

At the Foundation to Year 10 level, the VCAA provides curriculum for the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) and formerly administered the Achievement Improvement Monitor (AIM) program (now replaced by the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)) which provides an indication of the literacy and numeracy skills of students. Students in Victoria undertake the testing in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

In a Year 12 VCE English examination in 2011 the VCAA instructed over 40,000 students to analyse a supposedly made-up blog that they in fact plagiarised from an opinion piece written by Helen Razer which was published in Melbourne-based newspaper The Age in 2010. Some of the comments written on the original article's webpage were also plagiarised.[3]

In 2012 the VCAA caused further controversy when they published a digitally altered depiction of the painting Storming of the Winter Palace by Nikolai Kochergin in a history examination, which formed part of an image analysis question on the Russian Revolution. The altered painting depicted a BattleTech Marauder II robot participating in the storming along with the Bolsheviks in 1917.[4] A VCAA spokesperson stated that the image was sourced from the internet, and that 5.5 percent of students had their scores adjusted due to the robot's presence.

References

  1. 1 2 "Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority Annual Report 2009–2010" (PDF). Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (published 2010). 2009–2010: 15. Retrieved 2010-07-26.
  2. ↑ "Statutory Authorities - About the Department of Education". Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. Retrieved 2010-09-14.
  3. ↑ "Sloppy copy in exam raises ire". The Age. Melbourne. 2011-11-10.
  4. ↑ "VCE scores changed over Battle Tech Marauder confusion." The Age. Retrieved 5 October 2014.
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