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Fail Caesar! Some thoughts about the Australian Ancient History examinations confusion

  • Writer: Steven Hunt
    Steven Hunt
  • 15 minutes ago
  • 4 min read

On Tuesday 28 November The Guardian newspaper hit us with the news that a school in Queensland Australia had inadvertently been teaching the wrong Caesar for the forthcoming state examinations to be held the following day. While similar errors occasionally hit the headlines in the UK (the wrong English set text or the maths question that is impossible to answer), news about examination errors do not often cross

Australian Ancient History Examination confusion
Australian Ancient History Examination confusion

from the other side of the world – let alone anything about the teaching of Ancient History. Indeed, it might have come as something of a surprise for journalists to find out that Ancient History (or for that matter, Latin or Ancient Greek) is taught there at all. Shortly after the initial announcement, The Guardian announced that nine schools were affected – and what had seemed to be merely an error on the part of one school seemed to be something of a failure of the examination system itself.


It seemed that the schools - Brisbane State High school, Flagstone State Community College, Meridan State College, Redcliffe State College, Yeronga State High School, St. Teresa’s Catholic College, West Moreton Anglican College, James Nash State High School, and Kuranda District Sate College - had misread the examination specifications. Last year’s questions on Augustus Caesar had changed to this year’s Julius Caesar.  To the onlooking world, one Caesar looks very like another, and it took Prof. Ray Laurence, interviewed on ABC News, to elucidate the difference, for those folks at home who get their Romans mixed up. But he also took the opportunity to point out what it is that an ancient historian does, drawing attention to the practical skills of drawing together different kinds of evidence, often fractured and incomplete, to test hypotheses about life, art and politics in the ancient world – a skill set much prized by the CEOs of tech companies, perhaps, who like employees who can think differently and use their intuition.  AI can’t do that!


News spread rapidly. I was informed by one of my own ex-students (now a deputy head) that a viral TikTok was doing the rounds. Recriminations followed. Would the affected students have to do the exam to be allowed to gain concessions for having studied the wrong Caesar? The fact that this was an externally-marked examination worth one quarter of the total marks seemed to make things easier, however. The exam board seemed to suggest that students would have their grades calculated on the basis of the remaining three quarters, which were internally assessed. Face-saving and grade-saving all round and options for university entry still available for those poor 140 students. Questions remain to be asked – why did it take until the last moment to discover that the topic had changed? Had one school already alerted the exam board to a problem which the exam board itself had failed to follow through with? Could this happen again?


My colleagues in Australia expressed surprise that this could ever have happened. As every teacher knows, checking the examination specifications come as part of the job. I’m not suggesting that the teachers involved did not do this, especially since nine schools were involved.  There’s genuinely a mystery to be solved.


In his interview, Ray did give some interesting information about the numbers taking Ancient History at school and at University in Australia. In New South Wales (the Sydney area) from a high of 10,000 in schools about ten years ago there’s been a bit of a decline to 7,400 presently – though that has recently risen by 16%. There are around 400 undergrads at Macquarie and the same at Melbourne University. Not bad numbers at all, really. It would be a shame if this error affected uptake in the future.


What other lessons can we learn from this experience? Maybe that to put all one’s eggs in the same basket – an examination which is based purely on external assessment - is something of a risk (looking at you, England!). Maybe that changing the specifications too much for one thing that looks very much like another could be confusing? I have to suspect that it was more than this – those teachers would have known the difference between Augustus and Julius, after all. My main thought is how in England our examination specifications are so nit-picking, so trivial in factual recall of minute details, that no teacher would not follow the dedicated course materials as closely as possible just in case they missed something vital. But is this what an examination is now about – a sudden death quiz on which access to university or the professions is determined? Especially with AI giving us all a bit of a helping hand…..


For more information about Classics Education in Australia, see the following:


And the Special Edition of Classicum (2022): Teaching Classical Languages. 

  • Marshall, R. A History of the Classical Languages Association.

  • Edwards, K. Using Technology to Enhance Visual Learning in the Inclusive Latin Classroom.

  • Perrett, L. Adapting to an Online Curriculum.

  • Chong-Gossard, K. Some Classroom Practices in Teaching Ancient Greek and Latin in Universities.

  • Lawrence, S. Carpe Diem: Seizing the Opportunities of Online Learning.

  • Gleeson, T. Latin Outreach in Regional new South Wales.

  • Lewis, M. Embedding Māori Values and Second language Acquisition Strategies in a University Spoken Latin Club.

 
 
 

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