VCE scaling explained: how VTAC scales every study, the 2025 scaling report table (study score 20 to 50 to scaled score for 50 studies), the maths and language rules, the aggregate, the 2025 aggregate-to-ATAR table, and a printable scaling table and ATAR worksheet

VCE scaling is published in full every December by the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre, as a three-page scaling report and a fourteen-page aggregate-to-ATAR table, and almost nobody reads them. They answer every question families ask: what a 35 in Methods is worth against a 35 in Biology, why a language is "worth five points", what aggregate an ATAR of 90 needs, and whether to take Specialist for the scaling. This page is the 2025 report in plain tables, with VTAC's own method and worked examples, and a printable of the table and a worksheet for estimating an ATAR by hand. The interactive estimator is on the study score and ATAR page.

Download the 2025 VCE scaling table and ATAR worksheet (PDF) (50 studies with the scaled score at study scores 20 to 50, the scaled mean of each, the minimum aggregate for every ATAR from 40 to 99.90, and a worksheet to estimate an ATAR from six study scores; two pages, free).

What VTAC does, in its own terms

The VCAA gives each student a study score from 0 to 50 in each Units 3 and 4 study: a rank among the students who took that study in that year, placed on a scale with a mean of 30 and a standard deviation of 7, so most scores sit between 23 and 37. A 40 in Psychology and a 40 in Specialist Mathematics both mean "about the top 9 percent of that study's students". They do not mean the same achievement, because the two groups of students are different.

VTAC's scaling fixes that. For each study it looks at how the study's students performed in all their other studies and adjusts the study's scores to match. If Specialist Mathematics students average well above 30 in everything else they take, Specialist is scaled up until its distribution reflects that; if a study's students average below 30 elsewhere, it is scaled down. The result is the scaled study score, 0.00 to 55.00. In VTAC's words, studies with a more competitive cohort are scaled up and studies with a less competitive cohort are scaled down. Scaling is not about how hard the study is, how many hours it takes or how good the teaching is; it reads the students.

Two studies have extra rules:

• Mathematics. The four maths studies form a hierarchy (Specialist, then Methods, then General, then Foundation). Each is scaled twice, once by the normal method and once against the maths studies above and below it, and the higher of the two results is used. This is why Methods and Specialist are reliably among the strongest-scaled studies.
• Languages. Each language has 5 added to its scaled mean at a study score of about 30; the adjustment is smaller the further a score is from 30. It is an adjustment to the scaled score, not a flat 5 on the ATAR, and the table below already includes it. Small languages (ten or fewer eligible students) get the average of the previous three years' adjustments.

The 2025 scaling table: study score to scaled score

From VTAC's 2025 Scaling Report (11 December 2025). The scaled mean is the average scaled score in the study in 2025; the columns give the scaled score (rounded to a whole number) for study scores of 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50. VTAC works to two decimal places; these are the published indications.

How to read it: a study score of 50 scales to 50 in almost every study, so the top student loses nothing anywhere; what scaling changes is the middle. A 30 is 43 in Specialist, 35 in Methods, 34 in Chemistry, 31 in Biology, 28 in English and Psychology, 23 in Food Studies, 20 in Foundation Mathematics. A 40 ranges from 51 (Specialist) to 32 (Foundation). The language columns include the language adjustment.

The aggregate: what counts

VTAC's rules, from its ATAR and Scaling guide:

1. The primary four: the highest scaled score in an English study (English, EAL, English Language or Literature), plus the next three highest permissible scaled scores.
2. Increments: 10 percent of the fifth and 10 percent of the sixth permissible scaled scores, if there are any. A non-scored VET or an approved higher-education study has its own increment rules (a higher-education study gives a flat 3.0 to 5.0 by its result).
3. Restrictions: at most two results from one study area grouping in the primary four, and at most three in the whole aggregate. The groupings that bite are English (the four English studies), Mathematics (the four maths studies), Music, History, Information Technology, Contemporary Society and the language pairs (a first and second language of the same language).
4. The aggregate is placed on a percentile scale in steps of 0.05 and the top group receives 99.95. There is no ATAR of 100.

VTAC's four worked students, from the guide, with scaled scores to two decimal places:

The 2025 aggregate-to-ATAR table

The minimum scaled aggregate that gave each ATAR in 2025, from page 3 of the scaling report (the full table runs in steps of 0.05 in VTAC's separate fourteen-page document).

An ATAR of 99.95 began at 211.42. Reading the table against the four students: an ATAR of 90 is four scaled scores averaging about 36 plus two increments of about 3; an ATAR of 80 is four averaging 32 to 33; an ATAR of 70 is four averaging about 28, which is four study scores of about 30 in averagely-scaled studies with English among them.

Myths, against the table

• "Scaling punishes easy subjects." It does not read the subject; it reads the students. Food Studies scaled down in 2025 because its students averaged below 30 in their other studies, and the same would happen to any study with that cohort.
• "Do Specialist for the scaling." A 25 in Specialist scaled to 36; a 35 in Biology scaled to 36; a 37 in Psychology to about 36. A child who can get 35 in Biology but 25 in Specialist gains nothing and loses a year. A child who can get 40 in Specialist (51) against 40 in Biology (41) gains ten scaled points, which is roughly five ATAR points at the 90 mark. The rule is the same as in NSW: the study you rank well in.
• "A language is worth five ATAR points." The adjustment is up to 5 scaled points at a study score of about 30, shrinking away from 30, inside one of six studies, and a language in the primary four displaces another study. For a student scoring 30 in a language and 30 in the study it displaces, the gain is about 5 scaled points, which is about 2 ATAR points at the 80 mark.
• "The ATAR is a mark." It is a rank among the age cohort. Study scores do not add to it; scaled scores do, and the conversion changes every year with the cohort.
• "My SAC marks decide my study score." They decide the school's rank order; the exam decides the level the school's SAC marks are moderated to. The study score page walks through that.

How we use this with VCE students

We teach Year 11 and 12 students in Melbourne 1-on-1 online in the after-school hours, in Methods, Specialist, Chemistry, Physics, Biology and English. The scaling table is for the Year 10 subject meeting and nothing after it: pick the studies the child will rank in the top quarter of, keep an English the child can score in, and let Methods be the maths choice for any child who will sit in its top half. After that the work is the study score, which is rank in the study: SACs done to the study design's task conditions, past exams marked to the examination reports, and the exam, which is 50 to 60 percent of every study. The first 30-minute class is free; send the subject list and the last SAC results on WhatsApp or the contact page. The papers are in VCE past exams, the NSW version in HSC scaling explained, and the city page is Melbourne.

Download the 2025 VCE scaling table and ATAR worksheet (PDF)

Sources: VTAC, 2025 Scaling Report (11 December 2025) and 2025 Aggregate to ATAR Table (11 December 2025), both on vtac.edu.au under Reports and statistics; VTAC, ATAR and Scaling guide (the rules, the mathematics and language adjustments, the four worked students); VCAA, VCE Administrative Handbook, Score aggregation (the study score scale). Read on 25 October 2026. The 2026 report, published in December 2026, will replace the table; the relativities between studies change little from year to year.

Questions parents ask

See how we teach this, 1-on-1 online →