The Secret to Exam Success!

Students who achieve a Study Score above 40 in the VCE all do something that others often don’t. It’s called work, hard work.

Successful students do twice as much practice as their classmates, which equates to well over 450 questions across the year in each subject.

Student Maggie Stickland, currently in Year 12 at Mentone Girls’ Grammar, is working to achieve her personal best in VCE exams. Maggie has done almost 2000 practice questions in General Maths alone this year and knows how important practice is for results.

“Having access to additional practice questions and tests has been invaluable in preparing thoroughly for my SACs.” says Maggie.

“I find it really effective having notes, questions and video lessons all in the one place - it keeps my study structured and organised.”

Tim Macdonald, Deputy Principal at Mentone Girls’ Grammar, whose students will be sitting practice exams over the coming weeks ahead of VCE exams starting in October like other schools across the state, says practice does make perfect.

“We want to make sure every one of our students has an opportunity to excel,” said Macdonald. “A big part of this is making sure our Year 12s get plenty of practice applying what they learn and get familiar with the questions they’ll see on exams, well before exam day. The exams are where the rubber really hits the road, and all the practice these students put in hopefully pays off.”

Edrolo’s ‘Achieving Advanced Results In VCE Report’ looked at the study habits of 57,535 VCE Year 12 students in 2023 and 2024, who collectively completed 28.8 million questions across 7 subjects on the platform. This was analysed alongside the publicly available data on students who achieved a study score of 40+ in these 7 subjects, as published by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA).

Pete Goldsworthy, Edrolo CEO said, “It reflects what we see on the ground every day at Edrolo: practice not innate ability or cramming gets results. In fact, as little as ten practice questions a week across a year can make a difference in getting top marks.”

Education researcher Professor John Hattie, whose work on visible learning is widely adopted in schools and is part of the Edrolo Advisory Board, backs this up.
“Deliberate practice with the specific goal of mastering new concepts and skills can be effective for student growth and achievement. This massive dataset of local students further shows this”, says Hattie.

The full report is available to view here.