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2026 VCE Literature exam: What to learn from last year's mistakes
Hi all, in preparation for the upcoming exam, here's what to learn from last year's mistakes.
These are the 2025 results for the three assessed tasks.
Section A, Q1: average 3.4/6; scored zero 1%; full marks 2%.
Section A, Q2: average 8.8/14; scored zero 0.5%; full marks 1%.
Section B, close analysis: average 12.8/20; scored zero 0.3%; full marks 0.7%.
VCAA's figures are rounded. These are question averages, not study scores. Q1’s average was about 56.7% of the available marks, compared with 62.9% for Q2 and 64% for Section B.
1. Section A Q1: Explain why the passage matters in the whole text
Where students went wrong
Students retold the passage or analysed it as though the rest of the text did not exist. Some made inaccurate references to other moments.
What they should have done
Start with what the passage changes, exposes or establishes. Then connect a precise detail in it to another relevant moment in the text. For example, if a passage establishes a character’s confidence, a later reversal can reveal the limits of that confidence. Explain how the writer constructs that relationship. The significance is the passage’s contribution to your reading of the whole text, not just its position in the plot.
2. Section A Q2: Make the named concept do the organising
Where students went wrong
Answers drifted into a rehearsed theme essay, repeated Q1, or made a separate paragraph for each task verb without developing an interpretation.
What they should have done
Build an argument about the particular concept in the question. Select evidence from across the text that develops or complicates it. If the concept were authority, for example, you could examine how a text initially grants a speaker credibility and later exposes the cost of that authority. That is an illustrative approach, not a substitute concept for your actual question.
3. Section A Q2: A quotation needs close attention
Where students went wrong
Students made broad statements about values but did not analyse the literary choices supporting those statements.
What they should have done
Choose the word, image, narrative shift or structural decision that your interpretation depends on. Explain what it permits the reader to infer, then connect that inference to the concept. If your paragraph would make the same claim after removing every quotation, check whether you have actually used the evidence. Avoid inventing certainty where the text leaves competing possibilities.
4. Section B: Connect at least two passages
Where students went wrong
Responses treated the passages as separate mini-essays. This was particularly noticeable with poetry and short-story collections.
What they should have done
Use detailed reading of at least two set passages to develop an interpretation of the text. Identify a relationship between them: a recurring image that changes meaning, a contrast in narrative voice, or a tension in how an idea is presented. Explain that relationship rather than relying on a linking word. You need analysis within each passage and a reason those analyses belong together.
5. Section B: Do not let terminology outrun the evidence
Where students went wrong
The report identified imprecise wording, including misuse of juxtaposition, and interpretations the passages could not support.
What they should have done
If you call something a juxtaposition, identify the two things placed beside each other and explain what their relationship creates. If you argue that a narrator is unreliable, show the wording or contradiction that supports it. A precise sentence about a small textual detail is more useful than an impressive term attached to an unsupported claim.
Source: VCAA 2025 Literature examination report: source. Averages and percentages above are VCAA's published, rounded figures; the explanations are my paraphrases.
Use the VCE Literature hub and past papers and examiner reports alongside this.
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