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