With the beginning of VCAA exams this week, I thought a comparison might be in order. In Room 17, where I teach my English language class, I found the two booklets for last year’s Literature Exam. Section A contained 34 pages and Section B a further 64, totalling 98 pages!

A visit to our Heritage Room reveals an interesting comparison, as, there, in colour, is the Literature Exam completed by former pupil Pauline Stevens (nee Connolly), mother of former staff member Louise Stevens and mother-in-law and grandmother of current staff members Megan and Emma Stevens.

As you will see in the images, Pauline’s Literature and Modern History exams were a single page and were not printed in uniform lengths but appropriate to the number of questions in the exam.

Students in November 1954, were asked to answer four of the questions on the Lit exam with the first one being compulsory and the others chosen. Fascinatingly, I can go to the Archives and find the book containing the results Pauline achieved back in the 1950s, but, these days, due to privacy conventions, there is no record of how the 2024 students fared! Fancy!

Damian Smith

Archives