Sydney Morning Herald - Latest News
· collected 2026-09-06 · by Craig Butt, Alex Crowe
Welcome to the eighth edition of Schools that Excel, an annual series in which The Age celebrates schools that achieve outstanding improvement in their VCE results.
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that → welcome → results
The Age has gathered VCE results data from the past 10 years for every secondary school in the state offering year 12 subjects and turned it into an easy-to-use dashboard to show how each school fared over time, its top subjects, and more.
Enter the name of your school in the interactive below to see the results:
The Schools that Excel interactive brings together detailed results from Victorian government, independent and Catholic schools.
What can I learn from this interactive tool?
The interactive tool lets you gauge a school’s VCE performance over a 10-year period, so you can see whether it has improved or maintained its results.
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it → gather → results
When VCE results are released in December, only the current year’s figures are provided.
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figures → release → December
That information is useful, but doesn’t tell you about how representative the results are of the school’s typical performance.
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results → tell → performance
By threading together data from the past decade, a much clearer picture emerges.
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picture → thread → decade
But not all schools cater to students who are aiming for a place at university, and the Schools that Excel dashboard reflects this – you can also see how students enrolled in VET programs fared.
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students → cater → programs
What does the dashboard show?
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dashboard → show → What
The information about each school is divided into several panels.
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information → divide → panels
Here is a guide to interpreting the data:
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guide → interpret → data
Average student performance shows the median VCE subject study score for the school since 2016, which is a good indicator of typical student achievement.
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which → show → achievement
The horizontal line at 30 on the graph is the yardstick that shows how the typical student at this school fares against the statewide average.
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student → show → average
The interactive does not show median ATARs because this data is not available for the past decade for each school.
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data → show → school
High achievers shows the percentage of the school’s VCE subject scores that were among the best in the state.
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that → show → state
These are scores of 40 or above, which put students within the top 10 per cent of all those who completed that VCE subject.
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who → put → subject
This panel also shows the subjects in which students obtained the best results.
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students → show → results
Completion rates shows the enrolment numbers in VCE and VET over the past five years, as well as the satisfactory completion rates among year 12s.
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rates → show → year
Unfortunately, data was not released on VET completion rates in 2021, which is highlighted in the interactive.
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which → release → interactive
VCE VM and VPC provides data on the new VCE Vocational Major and the Victorian Pathways Certificate programs, which were implemented in schools to replace the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) from 2023.
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which → provide → 2023
The data shows whether the vocational major or pathways certificate were offered at a school and how many year 12 students completed either stream.
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students → show → stream
And while VCAL has been phased out, the interactive displays enrolment and completion data for it from 2020-2022.
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interactive → phase → 2020
In addition, changes to VCAL – due to the VCE Vocational Major and the Victorian Pathways Certificate being phased in from 2023 – also mean that there were far fewer VCAL enrolments in 2023.
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changes → phase → 2023
School awards shows five high-gain schools that The Age judged as having shown the best improvement in their VCE results over the past decade.
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Age → show → decade
One school was selected from Melbourne’s south, east, north and west, as well as rural/regional Victoria.
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school → select → south
Starting in 2025, we also started recognising one school in Victoria that has shown improvement in its vocational education completion rates over the past five years.
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that → start → years
In previous years, we included a Student pathways section that shows whether a school’s graduates from the previous two years went on to further study at university or TAFE, or whether they took on an apprenticeship or joined the workforce.
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they → include → workforce
This survey was not carried out with 2024 graduates in 2025, so this section is blank in this year’s Schools that Excel interactive.
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section → carry → Schools
However, the results for participating schools from the survey of students who graduated in 2023 can be found here in our Victorian Schools Guide.
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who → participate → Guide
Which schools are featured in the dashboard?
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schools → feature → dashboard
The interactive dashboard features data on more than 500 Victorian schools that offered year 12 subjects in 2025.
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that → feature → 2025
It also includes schools classified as “small” by the VCAA, for having enrolments below a certain threshold.
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It → include → threshold
A dialogue box will pop up in the interactive if you enter the name of a small school and flag that its performance may not be comparable with larger schools, and that it may not be possible to observe a trend in results over the 10-year time frame.
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it → pop → frame
If a school has few students, it means the median and its percentage of study scores of 40 or above can fluctuate greatly year-on-year depending on the cohort.
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median → have → cohort
Which schools do not feature in the interactive?
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schools → feature → interactive
Schools for which there is insufficient data, schools that exclusively offer the International Baccalaureate, and adult education institutions do not show up in the interactive.
There might also be gaps in the data for years in which student enrolments did not reach a certain threshold.
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enrolments → be → threshold
Earlier this year, The Age launched our Victorian Schools Guide, an interactive dashboard that displays comprehensive VCE and vocational data.
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that → launch → data
Most of the information that is available in the Schools that Excel interactive can be found in the Victorian Schools Guide, along with more detailed data on school performance and enrolments.
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that → find → performance
The Victorian Schools Guide is a section of The Age website that also features some of our education team’s most recent reporting and analysis on VCE teaching, school performance and trends.
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that → feature → teaching
We plan to add new sections and additional data sets to the Victorian Schools Guide in coming months to help guide you in your school choices, so it is worth bookmarking it in your browser.
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it → plan → browser
We used Department of Health boundaries to categorise schools as metropolitan or regional and divided the metropolitan region into west, north, east and south Melbourne.
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We → use → west
Schools in each region were chosen based on their records of improvement in median VCE study scores, while the winner for the new vocational education category was chosen based on improvement in VET completion rates.
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winner → choose → rates
