Download

You can use a program like WinRAR or 7-Zip (freeware) to open the archive.

Explanation

This archive contains the names of students who achieved scores of 40 or above in VCE subjects in 1998 and between 2000 and 2009. The data (all publicly available) is from the Herald Sun (2007, 2008, 2009) and The Age newspapers.

The data has been sorted into the following forms:

• A single list with all students and their scores
• A single list with all schools and their score counts (number of 50s, 49s, etc.)
• A list of students for each subject
• A list of students for each subject, grouped by school
• A list of students for each school
• Information on how many students, schools and 40+ scores there were in the year

If you have VCE-related data that you think should be included in the archive, or if you notice any particularly egregious errors, please contact me.

Example Student Listing

Also see the list of subjects and list of schools included in this archive.

Ordering

Most lists have two versions - one labelled 'Sorted by Highest Scores' and the other labelled 'Sorted by Total Scores'. The first ordering method ranks a single score of 50 above two scores of 49, while the second method does the opposite.

Rankings

Do not read too much into the rankings shown here. School populations are not taken into account, so large schools have an inherent advantage, and of course not all students opt to have their scores published. Furthermore, the scores are not scaled (a raw score of 40 in Business Management is not equivalent to a raw score of 40 in Latin). Certain official statistics (such as the percentage of study scores of 40 or above for each school) can be found at the VCAA website.

Known Issues

• Sometimes two (or more) students from a given school will share the same name. Unfortunately, this means that their results will be combined in the archive. I know of two such occurrences (one in 2007 and one in 2009), but there may well be more.

• Some schools seem to have multiple associated names in the Herald Sun's data. For example, there are students listed in 2009 from both 'Haileybury Girls College Keysborough' and 'Zhaileybury Girls College Keysborough' (the latter being an incorrect spelling). This can result in some students having their scores split in the archive.

• The school names present in the data from 2002 are inconsistent. I am gradually going through the data and cleaning it up, so it might be fixed one day.

Update History

2009.12.17

2009.12.16

2009.01.27

2008.12.26

Feedback

I appreciate feedback, so feel free to contact me. If you find any errors in the archive or think something is missing, I'd like to know. If you have a useful VCE-related resource, forward it on and I might include it on this page.

Source code

I wrote a Java program to create the sorted lists found in the archive. In hindsight, it probably would have been easier to import the data into a database and run some queries on it, but making the program was nevertheless a fun distraction.

I hadn't intended for anyone else to see the code, and it's poorly documented (and perhaps poor in general!), so you have been warned.

Useful Links

• Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA)
  • Victorian Certificate of Education Index
  • Post-Compulsory Completion and Achievement Information
• Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC)
  • VCE Results and ENTER Service
  • VCE Subject Scaling Report
  • Aggregate to ENTER Table
• VCE Article @ Wikipedia
• VCE Notes (VCE Community/Forum)
• ENTER Calculator
• Merspi - Q&A for VCE students