I refer toTanya Chilcott’s article in The Courier Mail  dated 7 August 2012 titled ‘Teachers slam flawed school assessments‘, in which the QSA spokeswoman said that no evidence of rorting had been offered. I wonder if the spokeswoman is suffering from a dose of the head-in-sand syndrome. Given that teachers in Queensland set and mark their own exams, does she really believe that none of the hundreds of teachers in the senior schools rort the system in some way or other? I put it to her that many teachers teach to the tests to varying degrees and that in some schools exam papers are given to students as revision papers.These are but two of the dozens of unethical practices that schools resort to, and which the current system allows, in order to give their students a higher grade than they would otherwise get. People who think that a student’s grade in Queensland reflects the student’s true ability are deluding themselves. It is time that some form of external exam was included as part of the assessment system in Queensland.  If QSA’s spokeswoman has been waiting for schools to own up to the rorting, she will be waiting for a long time.