Policy of secrecy leaves authors with ‘no inkling’ works are being set for NSW’s year 12 exams

When roughly 60,000 year 12 students sit down to do their final English exam in New South Wales each year, they have no idea what texts they’ll be asked to analyse.

Likewise, the authors of those texts are neither asked nor warned by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) – an increasingly controversial policy as students sometimes take to social media to vent their post-exam frustration directly at them.

Author Delia Falconer was just as surprised as anyone on Wednesday when she found out that two pages of her book Sydney were in this year’s Higher School Certificate exam, being told on Twitter by young students emerging from the exam.

“I had absolutely no inkling – I guess it has to be that way, given that exam papers have to be prepared with a bit of security, but it wouldn’t be bad to get a tip-off on the day,” she said.

She admitted to being nervous about being selected after seeing what happened to Mununjali poet Ellen van Neerven, who was bombarded with racist abuse by students when their poem, Mango, was used in the 2017 HSC English exam. Van Neerven was also not told beforehand because of security protocols around exam questions, NESA admitted at the time.

“I think it is important that people know that we don’t have any say about being in the HSC, that no one submits to be part of the HSC. It is entirely outside our control – no one is making a fortune out of your pain and trauma!” Falconer said.

“I just hope the education department is aware that these things don’t go out into a void – we do hear from the students.”

It has become something of an annual event for Australian students to track down the sources of their exam texts, with both positive and negative outcomes.

In 2018, year 12 students in Victoria bombarded a Melbourne cafe with one-star reviews on Facebook and Google after being asked to discuss a fictional cafe with a similar name in their VCE exam. In response, the owner offered students free coffee if they quoted the exam question, which encouraged more positivity.

When van Neerven was sent racist abuse after the 2017 HSC, NESA’s then-CEO, David de Carvalho said he was “appalled” and publicly called on students to apologise to the poet.

And last year acclaimed Vietnamese American poet Ocean Vuong was perplexed after NSW students – and a few of their parents – began to send him feedback, after they were given the task of studying excerpts of his award-winning novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous in the HSC.

“Yo, what the hell is an HSC exam and why are all of y’all failing it?” Vuong wrote, after sharing messages from students that included: “UR TEXT WAS GOOD BUT SO CONFUSING”.

Falconer said her experience had been “an absolute delight”.

“It has been really lovely to have little conversations with young people. The feedback I have had is that it was a fair exam question and hasn’t made anyone upset, so I have been very lucky. I’ve been really enjoying it, I am quite honoured. Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn people off my writing,” she said.

Fellow author Nikki Gemmell was also surprised to discover she was in this year’s HSC exam. “A column of mine made it onto the HSC English paper today (I had no idea.) Daughter now a minor celeb in the playground. Finally, validation as a parent,” she joked on Twitter on Wednesday.

Later on ABC’s The Drum, Gemmell even tried to answer the exam question, which asked how her column “explores the paradoxes of human behaviour”. Afterwards, she tweeted: “I reckon my answer (on @TheDrum tonight) was around Band 4. Ie Cld do better.”

Gemmell’s experience is reminiscent of that of the British author Ian McEwan, who helped his son with a school essay about his own novel, Enduring Love.

“Compelled to read his dad’s book — imagine. Poor guy. I confess I did give him a tutorial and told him what he should consider,” McEwan told the Daily Mail, adding: “I didn’t read his essay but it turned out his teacher disagreed fundamentally with what he said. I think he ended up with a C+.”

NESA confirmed authors weren’t given prior notice that their work would appear in an exam to keep the test secret.

“The works are allowed to be included in the HSC exam paper without permission under Section 200B of the Copyright Act 1968,” a spokesperson said.

“To protect the integrity of HSC exam papers, authors and artists whose work appears in HSC exam papers are not advised prior to the exam date.”

The spokesperson added it was “unacceptable for students to post comments in a hateful or a derogatory way on any platform”.