2026 VCE General Mathematics Exam: What to Learn From Last Year's Mistakes

2025 median exam grade: C+ for both papers. VCAA does not publish an exact median mark.

Exam 1 average: 27.75/40, or 69.4%. 30,918 students were assessed. 7.5% received an A+.

Exam 2 average: 30.6/60, or 51.0%. 30,895 students were assessed. 6.9% received an A+.

VCAA reports the means as 55.5/80 and 61.2/120. These are converted to each paper's mark scale. They are separate exam results, not study scores.

Figures: VCAA's 2025 grade distribution, examinations on pages 2 and 3.

Question statistics come from the Exam 1 report and Exam 2 report. Percentages and published averages are rounded. The working below explains the corrections.

Where marks were lost in 2025

Exam 1 Q23: Effective interest rates

41% chose the correct answer, B. 32% chose D.

Where students went wrong. 32% chose $1264. That answer matches treating the effective annual rate as a nominal rate and compounding it fortnightly. This is an explanation of the wrong option, not a reported reason for each student's choice.

What they should have done. Use the effective annual rate of 4.51% for the five years, or convert it to a nominal rate before using fortnightly compounding.

The direct calculation is $5000 × 1.0451⁵ = $6233.8916. Subtract the original $5000 because the question asks for interest earned. That gives $1233.8916, rounded to $1234. Fortnightly compounding does not mean you can divide any quoted annual rate by 26.

Exam 2 Q4b: The sign of the correlation coefficient

Average 0.2/1. 79% scored zero.

Where students went wrong. Many wrote positive 0.284 after taking the square root of the coefficient of determination.

What they should have done. Check the slope before choosing the sign.

Here, r² = 0.0806, but the regression line's slope is negative. So r = −√0.0806 = −0.284 to three decimal places. Taking the square root gives the magnitude; the direction of the relationship gives the sign.

Exam 2 Q4d: Extrapolation

Average 0.3/1. 73% scored zero.

Where students went wrong. They referred to the predicted sale price being outside the data range.

What they should have done. Refer to the explanatory variable, distance from the city centre.

The prediction used 2 km, which was outside the observed distance range. That makes it extrapolation. Referring to an unusually high or low predicted price does not establish whether the distance was inside the original data range.

Exam 2 Q7c: Completing the loan table

Average 0.4/1. 60% scored zero.

Where students went wrong. They used a finance solver despite being instructed to use the table. It produced a different balance to the nearest cent.

What they should have done. Start from the table's balance after payment 2, $824,443.59, and calculate the next row.

• Monthly interest: $824,443.59 × 0.042 ÷ 12 = $2885.55 to the nearest cent.
• Principal repaid: $15,730.88 − $2885.55 = $12,845.33.
• New balance: $824,443.59 − $12,845.33 = $811,598.26.

Recalculating from the original loan ignores the rounded values the question told you to use.

Exam 2 Q12b: Counting children still enrolled

Average 0.2/1. 87% scored zero.

Where students went wrong. Many answered 115 because they included children who had already left the centre.

What they should have done. Read what each row of the state vector represents before adding it.

After applying the transitions and new enrolments for 2025 and 2026, the first three entries are 15.25, 15.9375 and 19.11875. They total 50.30625, giving 50 children to the nearest whole number. The fourth entry tracks children who have left. Adding it gives 115, but those children are not all attending the centre.

Exam 2 Q13b(i): Rounding an expected number

Average 0.1/1. 91% scored zero.

Where students went wrong. They rounded the expected number of children to 10 before calculating the percentage.

What they should have done. Keep the full calculator value until the final answer.

Week 1 to week 10 requires nine transitions. Applying K⁹ to the initial vector gives an expected cooking group of about 10.08562691 children. Divide the unrounded value by 27 and multiply by 100: 37.354...%, which rounds to 37.4%. Using 10 instead gives 37.0%. An expected count can be fractional during the calculation.

Exam 2 Q18d: Reducing the project duration

Average 0.2/1. 79% scored zero.

Where students went wrong. VCAA gives no common-error breakdown for this question. A trap to avoid is shortening only one critical path while the other still takes 25 days.

What they should have done. Reduce both 25-day critical paths to 22 days at minimum cost.

The paths are A → D → H → J → L and A → D → I → K → L. Reduce A by two days, which shortens both paths. Then reduce H by one day and K by one day to remove the remaining day from each path.

Cost: 2 × $500 + $300 + $100 = $1400. Cheap reductions to F or G do not solve this because neither lies on those critical paths.

Use the paper alongside this

I run ATARMAXXING. Our VCE General Mathematics hub has notes and extra practice if one of these topics needs work.

Both 2025 official exams are in our past-paper index. For both reports, use the 2025 Report link on our official papers page, then choose Exam 1 or Exam 2 on VCAA's page. The direct reports are also linked above.

Try Exam 2 Q4b, Q7c and Q13b(i) before reading their report sections. Together they are worth 3 marks. Check the sign, starting balance and rounding step that decided each answer. The 2026 exam predictors group official past questions by topic if you want more recursion, finance or network practice, and AI marking for General Mathematics is free for every account until Sunday 1 November 2026 if you want your working checked.

This post first appeared on r/ATARMAXXING.