Why Some Students Succeed in VCE — and Others Don't

It’s the question I get asked more than almost any other.

What actually makes a student succeed in VCE?

I’ve been thinking about this since my own Year 12. And after working with more than 50 students over the past two years, the answer has become very clear to me.

First, Let’s Get One Thing Out of the Way

Intelligence helps. Of course it does. Having a naturally sharp mind in VCE is like having good running shoes — it gives you an edge. But it won’t carry you to the top on its own. VCE simply isn’t built that way.

It rewards the students who work the hardest. Not the smartest. The ones who put in genuine, sustained effort consistently outperform students who are naturally gifted but coasting. It’s actually quite a fair system when you think about it.

So yes — hard work matters enormously. But this is where nearly every student gets it wrong.

Hard Work Alone Isn’t Enough

I’ve had students come to me having written dozens of essays before their SACs. And they’re still not outperforming students who’ve written half as many. More work, worse results.

Why? Because they’re confusing activity with progress.

Writing essay after essay without deep, genuine reflection on your feedback isn’t studying — it’s habit-building. And if the habit is flawed, you are embedding those flaws more firmly into your writing with every rep. You’re doing more work to get worse results.

Schools, unfortunately, often reinforce this problem. There’s a culture in a lot of classrooms that equates effort with hours spent, and hours spent with outcomes. Yet a very miniscule proportion of schools and within those schools, teachers genuinely teach students how to study! If I was a school principle this would be the first thing I would do.

What the Students Who Succeed Actually Do Differently

The highest-performing students I’ve worked with think about VCE differently. They don’t ask how much can I do? They ask what do I need to improve, and what’s the most efficient path to getting there?

Before sitting down to write, they ask:

• What is this task actually requiring of me?

• What does VCAA want here?

• What are my weakest areas, and am I specifically working on those — or practicing what I’m already good at?

• When I get feedback, am I actually sitting with it and acting on it?

This is what I call a feedback loop. You produce work, you get feedback, you identify your weakest areas, you target those specifically, and you repeat. It sounds almost too simple. But the students who genuinely build this habit improve faster than almost anyone else — and they’re the ones who surprise themselves come exam time (and they always surpise themselves)!

In English, This Looks Like Skeleton Plans

If you’ve heard me speak about English tutoring, you’ve probably heard me talk about skeleton plans. This is the foundation of everything I teach, and I’ll keep saying it until I’m redundant.

Here’s the insight: what makes English hard isn’t the writing. It’s the thinking. Coming up with the evidence, the analysis, the argument — and doing it under exam pressure.

Most students sit down to write a practice essay and delegate all of that thinking to the writing process itself. They’re figuring out their argument while they’re writing it. And that’s exactly where they freeze. That’s where the clock overtakes them.

The skeleton plan separates the thinking from the execution. You build your entire argument first — topic sentence in full, anchor moments, and a clear plan for how you’re going to use your evidence — before a single paragraph is written. Then, when you write, you’re not thinking. You’re executing a plan you already know is good.

My Journey

Let’s start here.

I wasn’t always a strong student. English wasn’t my first language — I had to learn it from scratch when I came to Australia. In my earlier years of high school, I was scoring in the 60s. Occasionally scraping through and failing other subjects. English in particular felt like it was working against me.

But Year 12 was different. Not because I became more intelligent. It was because I stopped trying to work harder and started trying to work smarter. I built systems. I identified my weaknesses instead of avoiding them. I focused my feedback rather than chasing volume and that’s when everything changed.

If I told you that I wrote fewer than ten practice essays in the lead-up to my English exam and I came out with a raw 50 you would say I am a liar or a salesman! But this is the truth.

Every single one of my students last year who used this same approach — the ones who scored 50, 47, 46, 41, and our lowest score of 35 — did the same thing. Not more work. Smarter work.

Questions Every Student Should Be Asking Right Now

If I could sit down with every VCE student today, these are the four questions I’d put in front of them:

1. Have you actually read the study design and the examiners’ reports? Not skimmed them. Read them. Do you genuinely know what VCAA is rewarding — and what it’s penalising?

2. Have you honestly identified your areas of weakness? Not your areas of comfort. Your weaknesses. The things that cost you marks every time. Are you working on those, or are you practising what you’re already good at?

3. When you receive feedback, what do you actually do with it? Do you read it, nod, and move on to the next essay? Or do you sit with it, understand exactly what went wrong, and build that understanding into everything you write next?

4. Are you being consistent? Not perfect. Not burning yourself out. But showing up every week, every day — whatever that looks like for you — and chipping away at improvement.

The gap between a 99 and an 85 isn’t intelligence. It isn’t even hours. It’s the quality of the work being done, and whether the student has a genuine system for getting better.

One Final Thought

VCE is, in many ways, a game. I say that with the caveat that I genuinely wish it were more about intellectual growth and less about ranking. But the reality is: it’s a competitive system, and to do well in it you have to understand the rules, understand what examiners are actually rewarding, and play it deliberately.

The students who treat it like chess — who think strategically, identify their weak areas, and work to improve them — are the ones who come out on top.

It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing less, concentrating your effort on what actually matters.

Yahav Ben-Yosef is the founder of Tutors Melbourne, specialising in VCE English. He achieved a 99.95 ATAR and a raw 50 in English. If you’d like to know more about how we work with students, visit our website.