Stage 2 Geography Subject Outline (version 1.0, from 2024)
Stage 2 Geography has three assessment types. Assessment Type 1: Geographical Skills and Applications (40%) is four school-assessed tasks. Assessment Type 2: Fieldwork Report (30%) is an individual report on the student's own fieldwork, school assessed. Assessment Type 3: Examination (30%) is the externally assessed e-exam: 130 minutes with no separate reading time, in two sections that must both be attempted in full. Section 1 (geographical skills, built on a separate topographic map sheet and on-screen reference materials) and Section 2 (Topic 1 and Topic 3 only) have each carried 28 and 32 marks out of 60 in the 2024 and 2025 public e-exams (65 minutes suggested per section), while the 2023 e-exam — under the outline in force before the 2024 change — split 27 and 33 marks (60 and 70 minutes suggested). The subject outline itself specifies only "two sections" of "approximately 50%" each and publishes no mark total; the 60-mark, two-section shape is read from the Board's own past e-exams, not stated as a fixed 2026 specification. Approved graphics or scientific calculators may be used (memory cleared, no CAS); there is no formula sheet, data booklet or notes sheet. School and external assessment are combined into one grade from A+ to E- against the performance standards — the exam is not reported as a percentage and no mark-to-grade conversion is published.
Past papers on this subject span more than one subject outline. Papers written under an older one still work as practice, but the topics they test have changed — the index labels every paper with the subject outline it was set under.
Earlier outline — 2023 and prior (check current requirements) · 2023–2023Current Subject Outline (version 1.0, from 2024) · 2024–present
The topics, one by one
Each area below lists the concepts named in the subject outline, what the SACE Board exam asks of them, and the mistake that most often costs marks.
- Geographical skills and fieldwork (examination Section 1)
- Topic 1: Ecosystems and people (examination Section 2)
- Topic 3: Population change (examination Section 2)
- Topics 2, 4 and 5 — Climate change, Globalisation, Transforming global inequality (school assessment only, not examined)
Area 1 of 4
Geographical skills and fieldwork (examination Section 1)
Section 1 is built entirely on a separate topographic map sheet (real places used so far: Interlaken, Switzerland in 2025; Wollongong, NSW in 2024; Papatoetoe, Southern Auckland in 2023) plus on-screen photographs, satellite images and cross-sections. It draws on grid and area references, direction and latitude/longitude, contours and relief, scale (distance, route length and area), and reading and comparing photographs, satellite images and older maps. Fieldwork content is tested through unfamiliar scenarios rather than the student's own investigation: writing a testable hypothesis, choosing and justifying primary data-collection techniques, judging the validity and limitations of a method, and evaluating whether a graph, map or table is an effective way to present a data set.
What the subject outline lists under this area · 9 points
- Grid references, area references, direction and latitude/longitude
- Scale: distance, route length and area from a topographic map
- Contours, relief, spot heights and cross-sections
- Interpreting aerial, oblique and ground photographs and satellite images
- Site, situation and settlement pattern
- Comparing an older map or image with the current map to describe change
- Writing a testable fieldwork hypothesis
- Primary data-collection techniques, sampling and data validity
- Evaluating and choosing appropriate visual representations of data
What the exam asks
Every part is marked on specific map or source evidence. Papers have asked students to identify a feature at a six-figure grid reference, pick the highest-elevation grid square from contours, describe a route between two points using direction, distance, elevation and land use, match points on a cross-section to features on the map, evaluate why a site suits a stated use, describe how a photographed or mapped area has changed against an older map or image, suggest and justify two primary data-collection techniques for a stated hypothesis, complete a partly filled fieldwork-planning table, and evaluate a thematic map or graph and suggest a genuinely different alternative presentation method.
Where marks go missing
Treating an 'alternative method' question as satisfied by a different-looking version of the same technique: the 2025 Subject Assessment Advice records that offering a choropleth map as an alternative to a choropleth map scored zero. The Advice also notes many students could not use the map's scale to convert to a real-world distance, and that repeating the same observation in two parts of a multi-part answer earns no extra marks.
15 real SACE Board questions indexed on this area →
Area 2 of 4
Topic 1: Ecosystems and people (examination Section 2)
This topic covers ecosystem components and how they interconnect (water, soil, atmosphere, vegetation), the categories of ecosystem services (provisioning, regulating and cultural, with supporting sometimes mentioned), how land-cover change drives land degradation and biodiversity loss, and the ecological footprint and biocapacity — what they measure, why footprints vary between countries, and government and community strategies to reduce them.
What the subject outline lists under this area · 6 points
- Ecosystem components and their interconnections
- Ecosystem services: provisioning, regulating and cultural
- Land-cover change, land degradation and biodiversity loss
- The ecological footprint and biocapacity, and how they are measured
- Why ecological footprints vary between countries
- Strategies to reduce footprints and improve sustainability
What the exam asks
Papers have asked students to explain how a boxed area on the map provides regulating, provisioning and cultural services, interpret a footprint-per-capita-versus-biocapacity graph and suggest reasons for the trend shown, explain how land-cover change from new housing affects the relationship between two named ecosystem components, suggest ways a city's land-cover change affects its total ecological footprint, and explain strategies governments use to reduce footprints and improve sustainability.
Where marks go missing
The 2025 Subject Assessment Advice records around 20% nil responses on an ecosystem-services question and widespread confusion between the three categories; the 2024 Advice records many students naming tennis courts and water tanks as ecosystem services rather than the process behind a genuine service. A footprint is not a carbon footprint — it includes cropland, grazing land, forest products, fishing grounds and built-up land as well as carbon — and clearing native vegetation is a biocapacity loss, not by itself a footprint increase.
6 real SACE Board questions indexed on this area →
Area 3 of 4
Topic 3: Population change (examination Section 2)
This topic covers population trends (birth and death rates, total fertility rate, life expectancy, ageing), population structures and pyramids and their consequences (including the dependency ratio), the factors driving those trends in economically developed and developing countries, and the movement of people — types of migration, push and pull factors, and the impacts of migration at origin and destination, including forced migration.
What the subject outline lists under this area · 6 points
- Birth rates, death rates, total fertility rate and natural change
- Population structures, pyramids and the dependency ratio
- Ageing and youthful populations and government responses
- Global population distribution
- Types of migration and push and pull factors
- Impacts of migration at origin and destination, including forced migration
What the exam asks
Papers have asked students to analyse a components-of-population-change graph commenting on both natural change and net migration, describe a pattern of net migration shown on a map, discuss the implications of an ageing population with reference to a real or studied example and a specific government response, identify a political and an economic barrier to international migration, and evaluate the effects of outward migration on an origin country or region using named examples.
Where marks go missing
Total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime, not a birth rate, and the 2024 Advice records this being confused; replacement level is about 2.1. The 2025 Advice records a question asking for challenges of migration being answered with push and pull factors instead — those are two different things. Any question built on natural-change-and-net-migration data expects comment on both, not one.
6 real SACE Board questions indexed on this area →
Area 4 of 4
Topics 2, 4 and 5 — Climate change, Globalisation, Transforming global inequality (school assessment only, not examined)
The subject outline requires every Stage 2 Geography student to study Topic 2 (Climate change), Topic 4 (Globalisation) and Topic 5 (Transforming global inequality) as well as Topics 1 and 3, and each is the subject of at least one Assessment Type 1 school task.
What the exam asks
Not examined. Every public e-exam from 2023 to 2025 has drawn Section 2 only from Topic 1 and Topic 3; climate change appears in the exam only indirectly, as a regulating ecosystem service.
Where marks go missing
Assuming a topic that was taught must appear on the exam. Practice built around Topics 2, 4 or 5 is study time spent on content the e-exam cannot test — the exam only reaches map and fieldwork skills, Topic 1 and Topic 3.
Common questions
Is the Stage 2 Geography exam a written paper or an e-exam?
It is an electronic examination (e-exam), sat on a computer in the SACE e-exam platform, with a separate printed topographic map sheet supplied alongside it. Geography is on the SACE Board's list of subjects with e-exams, and the 2026 examinations timetable prints Geography in blue, the colour used for e-exam subjects.
Which topics does the examination actually test?
Section 1 tests geographical and fieldwork skills using the separate map sheet. Section 2 tests only Topic 1: Ecosystems and people and Topic 3: Population change. Topics 2 (Climate change), 4 (Globalisation) and 5 (Transforming global inequality) are compulsory content assessed only through school-based Assessment Type 1 tasks — they are not examined.
Is there reading time before the exam starts?
No. Geography is not printed in red on the SACE Board's 2026 examinations timetable — the subjects with additional reading time — so the full 130 minutes is working time with no separate reading period.
Can I use the 2023 exam to practise, or has the format changed?
You can, but check the section split. The subject outline's 2024 update changed the balance of the paper: the 2023 e-exam split 27 marks (Section 1) and 33 marks (Section 2), while the 2024 and 2025 e-exams both split 28 and 32. The question style and the Topic 1 / Topic 3 focus of Section 2 are unchanged.
What calculator can I use, and is there a formula sheet?
Geography is a designated non-mathematics subject for exam purposes, so up to two approved graphics or scientific calculators may be used with their memory cleared; CAS calculators are not permitted. There is no formula sheet, data booklet or notes sheet — calculations are limited to things like scale, distance, area and simple rates read from the map or a source.