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Assessment

Accreditation period for Units 1–4 from 2025

General assessment advice

Advice on matters related to the administration of Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) is published annually in the VCE Administrative Handbook.

Updates to matters related to the administration of VCE assessment are published in the VCAA Bulletin. Subscribe to the VCAA Bulletin.

Teachers must refer to these publications for current advice.

The VCE assessment principles underpin all VCE assessment practices and should guide teachers in their design and implementation of School-assessed Coursework (SACs). When developing SAC tasks, teachers should also refer to the VCAA policies and school assessment procedures as specified in the VCE Administrative Handbook section: Scored assessment: School-based Assessment.

The VCAA assessment principles determine that assessment of the VCE should be:

  • Valid and reasonable
  • Equitable
  • Balanced
  • Efficient.

Essentially, these principles invite schools and teachers to create assessment practices, including tasks and tools, that enable students to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the outcome statements, and the key knowledge and key skills through a range of opportunities and in different contexts (balanced), that do not advantage or disadvantage certain groups of students on the basis of circumstances and contexts (equitable), that are not overly onerous in terms of workload and time (efficient) and that only assess that which is explicitly described in the study design.

The glossary of command terms provides a list of terms commonly used across the Victorian Curriculum F–10, VCE study designs and VCE examinations and to help students better understand the requirements of command terms in the context of their discipline.

Specifications for the Critical Thinking Test and the two parts of Externally-assessed Task along with the corresponding examination reports can be accessed from the VCE Extended Investigation examination webpage

Graded Distributions for Graded Assessment can be accessed from the VCAA Senior Secondary Certificate Statistical Information webpage.

Excepting third-party elements, schools may use this resource in accordance with the VCAA’s Educational Allowance (VCAA Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy).

Study specific advice

The criteria for the assessment of each outcome in Units 3 and 4 are mandated and are published in the VCE Extended Investigation Study Design 2025.

The performance descriptors for the assessment criteria in the Unit 3 School-assessed Coursework and the Unit 4 Externally-assessed Task are mandated and published on the VCE Extended Investigation study page

Scheduling of oral reports in Unit 3 Outcome 3

Unit 3 establishes many of the skills and knowledge drawn on in Unit 4 as the investigation comes to fruition. The oral report provides an opportunity for students to consolidate and test the focus and direction of their investigation prior to the next stage of data collection and analysis. While the scheduling of School-assessed Coursework is the school’s decision, a number of factors should be considered when determining the optimal assessment schedule. The timing of the oral report in Unit 3 will depend on how advanced the student cohort is in their investigations and needs to strike a balance between allowing enough time for the deep thinking that will underpin the oral report as well as the next phase of the investigation. All students in the school group must be assessed at the same point in the year. Staggering oral reports over an extended period of time will not provide students with a fair and transparent assessment process. Setting staged deadlines that all students must reach will assist with ensuring that all students are ready for their oral reports at the same time.

Conditions of assessment for this School-assessed Coursework task are on pages 16 and 17 of the study design, including that an educated non-specialist panel of at least two members, including the supervising teacher, is convened. Members of the school panel may need training regarding the types of questions to ask students and the requirements of student work in this task. The Unit 3 Outcome 3: Oral report performance descriptors and the study design form the basis for panel training.

Externally-assessed Task

It is essential that students understand the differences between the assessment criteria for the two parts of the Externally-assessed Task – the written report and the oral presentation. The two parts of the Task draw on the same investigation’s content, but the criteria used in each part are different and the corresponding levels of performance describe different skills and knowledge. Teachers need to work with students to ensure that they understand the differing emphasis of the two parts of the Externally-assessed Task.

Close interrogation and consideration of the criteria and performance descriptors will assist students to achieve the best possible level of performance in both parts of the Task. Such interrogation can also clarify how it is possible for students to attain different levels of achievement in the two parts of the same Task.

Teachers need to provide guidance on the structure and conventions of the written report. Students should develop the report structure that best suits their investigation and is aligned with the description and conditions on page 22 of the study design. No single report structure or referencing system is mandated. Different academic disciplines present different expectations regarding the conventions of writing and the presentation of research.

The use of footnotes and appendices should be discussed with students. It is important that these are used judiciously and appropriately, within existing academic conventions. They must not become a means of including additional information over and above the word count.


Performance descriptors

How to use VCE Extended Investigation Performance descriptors

The VCAA performance descriptors are advice only and provide a guide to developing an assessment tool when assessing the outcomes of each area of study. The performance descriptors can be adapted and customised by teachers in consideration of their context and cohort, and to complement existing assessment procedures in line with the VCE Administrative Handbook and the VCE assessment principles.

VCE performance descriptors can assist teachers in:

  • moderating student work,
  • making consistent assessment,
  • helping determine student point of readiness (zone of proximal development), and
  • providing more detailed information for reporting purposes.

Using VCE performance descriptors can assist students by providing them with informed, detailed feedback and by showing them what improvement looks like.

Teachers can also explore the VCE performance descriptors with their students, unpacking the levels of expected performance so students have a clear understanding of what can be possible in terms of development and achievement.

When developing SAC tasks, teachers are advised to adapt the VCAA VCE performance descriptors to relate to the SAC task used and their school context. Teachers should use their professional judgment when deciding how to adapt the rubrics, considering the VCE assessment principles, the requirements of the relevant study design, the relevant outcome, key knowledge, key skills and assessment tasks, and the student cohort.

Teachers may consider using the following guidelines when adapting the VCE Performance descriptors and/or developing an assessment tool:

  • Develop the SAC task and assessment rubric simultaneously.
  • Assess the outcome through a representative sample of key knowledge and key skills. Not all key knowledge and key skills will be formally assessed in a SAC task – some key knowledge and key skills are observable in classroom engagement and learning – but all criteria in any assessment tool must be drawn directly from the study design.
  • Select the components of the VCE Performance descriptors that are most appropriate and most relevant for the selected outcome and SAC task.
  • Attempt to capture the skill level of a range of students within the cohort: the lowest expected quality of performance should be something most or all students can do, and the highest expected quality of performance should be something that extends the most able students. Similarly, ensure that the range of qualities identified in the rubric shows the lower and the upper range of what an individual student could show in terms of the outcome, key knowledge and the key skills.
  • Where necessary, add specific key knowledge and/or key skills to provide context to the expected qualities of performance.
  • Where necessary, remove expected qualities of performance that may not be relevant to the selected outcome and developed SAC task.
  • Show a clear gradation across the expected qualities of performance, indicating progression from one quality to the next.
  • Use consistent language from the study design outcome, key knowledge and key skills.
  • Ensure command terms reflect the cognitive demands of the outcome. Refer to the glossary of command terms for a list of terms commonly used across the Victorian Curriculum F–10, VCE study designs and VCE examinations.