Victoria’s state government has ordered a review of the Exam Assessment Authority, following errors on VCE sample exams.

This comes despite the body insisting the mistakes in sample tests did not compromise final exams.

Education Minister Ben Carroll announced that a full external review of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority will be introduced, after students sitting their Victorian Certificate of Education exams were able to view hidden questions on sample papers.

The assessment authority uploads sample exam papers each year to familiarise students with details of the test, but it emerged this week that Victorian students could spot hidden questions.

The authority’s chief executive Kylie White said on Thursday no exams had been compromised.

In 2023, multiple typographical errors appeared in general maths and chemistry exams, and six students received an incorrect Chinese language exam.

Five questions from the 2022 maths exams also contained errors.

Research has found that a racial bias was indicated among academics at Australian universities.

Researchers emailed about seven-thousand academics at Australian universities, with identical content of a prospective PhD student seeking to have a short meeting with the academic to discuss the potential of doctoral supervision.

The only difference was the implied racial backgrounds of the eight names used in the study.

The results showed that prospective students with white-European names were more likely to receive responses than those from non-white backgrounds.

The name Melissa Smith was 12 per cent more likely to receive a response than Rahul Kumar.

One of the authors of the study, Megan MacKenzie from Simon Fraser University in Canada, said this discrepancy was caused by the apparent racial bias of academics.

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Australians will experience lower standards of living if the nation’s universities continue to fall behind international standards, the sector’s peak body has warned.

With public funding already reducing, universities face possible financial difficulty, as the federal government restricts international student arrivals.

Universities Australia Chair and Uni SA Vice Chancellor David Lloyd says it would be economically self-destructive for the government to continue restricting the higher education sector.

He also said cutting international student numbers will further reduce the ability of tertiary institutions to deliver productivity-boosting research, and the ability to train Australia’s next generation of high-skill workers.