Revealed: The final exam that blindsided 140 year 12 students

6 hours ago 3

Julius Caesar’s family connections, military triumph in Gaul, establishing the Triumvirate, and death at the hands of conspirators – these were the details that Queensland’s year 12 ancient history students were tested on last Wednesday.

This masthead has obtained a copy of the four-question exam paper and stimulus booklet that made headlines when it was revealed that 140 students would walk in with less than 48 hours of cramming to carry them through.

But did it matter? The Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) maintained the exam was “skills-based”, and students who had been taught the wrong topic – Augustus, rather than his great-uncle Julius Caesar – would still be able to complete the test.

A stimulus image from the 2025 Queensland ancient history exam.

“No marks are awarded for recalling additional knowledge or terms outside the scope of the question and stimulus,” the QCAA website says.

The provided stimulus was nine texts – including excerpts from a biography written by Plutarch, philosophy from Cicero, and an image of a gold Roman Republican coin from 48-47 BCE.

Each was accompanied by a context statement, which detailed the date it was created, when events described within the text occurred, and insight into the authors’ intentions.

Students were given two hours to answer the questions.

Here were the questions that were asked:

QUESTION 1 (3 marks): Use evidence from Source 1 in the stimulus book to explain two ways Caesar made use of family connections to advance his political career.

QUESTION 2 (10 marks): Analyse evidence from Sources 2 and 3 in the stimulus book to explain the extent of Caesar’s success as a military commander in Gaul. In your response, use evidence to explain a possible motive for the creation of each source.

QUESTION 3 (11 marks): Evaluate the reliability and usefulness of evidence in Sources 4 and 5 in the stimulus book for understanding Caesar’s motives in establishing the Triumvirate. For each source, explain one judgment of reliability and one judgment of usefulness.

QUESTION 4 (16 marks): Synthesise evidence from Sources 6, 7, 8 and 9 in the stimulus book to develop a historical argument in response to the question: To what extent did the conspirators kill Caesar for the greater good of the Roman Republic? Include an explanation of how evidence from two of these sources corroborates a point being made in your historical argument.

Across the state, 2510 students at 172 schools sat the exam. The QCAA said students at nine schools were taught the wrong topic.

A spokesperson from Brisbane Catholic Education told this masthead one of the nine listed schools, St Teresa’s Catholic College at Noosaville, had identified the mix-up earlier in the year, and students had learnt about Julius Caesar last semester.

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek instructed the QCAA to run a review into its communications with schools, to figure out what went wrong.

Schools who discovered the mistake last week submitted applications for special consideration due to “illness or misadventure” to the QCAA.

But there was no room for a rewritten or substitute exam, as the tests are required to be standardised across all schools.

The QCAA also said creating one test required “several rounds of checking and editing”, which could take weeks to months depending on the subject.

Queensland’s year 12 external exams will continue for several weeks. Modern history students sat their exam on Monday.

On Tuesday, students would sit general maths – the second-largest subject cohort, at 21,350 students – while almost 28,000 students sat the English exam on Tuesday last week.

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