Welcome to the sixth edition of Schools that Excel, an annual series in which The Age celebrates schools that achieve outstanding improvement in their VCE results.

The Age has gathered VCE results data from the past 10 years for every secondary school in the state offering year 12 subjects and turned it into an easy-to-use dashboard to show how each school fared over time, its top subjects, and more.

Enter the name of your school in the interactive below to see the results:

The Schools that Excel interactive brings together detailed results from Victorian government, independent and Catholic schools.

What can I learn from this interactive tool?

The interactive tool lets you gauge a school’s VCE performance over 10 years, so you can see whether it has improved or maintained its results.

When VCE results are released in December, only the current year’s figures are provided. That information is useful, but doesn’t tell you anything about how representative the results are of the school’s typical performance. By threading together data from the past decade, a much clearer picture emerges.

But not all schools cater to students who are predominantly after a place at university, and the Schools that Excel dashboard reflects this – you can also see how students enrolled in VET programs fared.

What does the dashboard show?

The information about each school is divided into several panels. Here is a guide to interpreting the data:

Average student performance shows the median VCE subject study score for the school since 2013, which is a good indicator of typical student achievement. Study scores are out of 50, and a 30 is the average. The horizontal line at 30 on the graph is the yardstick that shows how the typical student at this school fares against the statewide average.

The interactive does not show median ATARs because this data is not available for the past decade for each school.

High achievers shows the percentage of the school’s VCE subject scores that were among the best in the state. These are scores of 40 or above, which put students within the top 10 per cent of all those who completed that VCE subject. This panel also shows the subjects in which students obtained the best results.

Completion rates shows the enrolment numbers in VCE, VET and VCAL over the past five years, as well as the satisfactory completion rates among year 12s. Unfortunately, data was not released on VET completion rates in 2021, which is highlighted in the interactive. In addition, changes to VCAL due to the VCE Vocational Major and the Victorian Pathways Certificate being phased in from 2023 also mean that there were far fewer VCAL enrolments in 2023.

Student pathways shows what 2021’s year 12 graduates were doing midway through 2022 – whether they had gone on to further study at university or TAFE, or whether they had taken on an apprenticeship or joined the workforce. This panel does not show up if a high percentage of a school’s year 12 graduates did not complete the survey. The survey results have not yet been published for 2022’s graduates and the survey of 2023’s graduates is still being carried out, so 2021 is the latest year for which data is available.

School awards shows the 10 high-gain schools that The Age judged as having shown the best improvement in their results over the past decade.

Which schools are featured in the dashboard?

The interactive dashboard features data on more than 500 Victorian schools that offered year 12 subjects in 2023.

It also includes schools that were classified by the VCAA as “small”, for having enrolments below a certain threshold. A dialogue box will pop up in the interactive if you enter the name of a small school to flag that its performance may not be comparable with larger schools and that it may not be possible to observe a trend in results over the 10-year time frame.

If a school has few students, it means the median can fluctuate greatly year-on-year depending on the cohort.

Which schools do not feature in the interactive?

Schools for which there is insufficient data, schools that exclusively offer the International Baccalaureate, and adult education institutions do not show up in the interactive.

There might also be gaps in the data for years in which student enrolments did not reach a certain threshold.

How were the Schools that Excel awards decided?

We used Department of Health boundaries to categorise schools as metropolitan or regional and divided the metropolitan region into west, north, east and south Melbourne.

One government school and one non-government (Catholic or independent) school were chosen for each area based on their records of improvement.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.