Students in Years 11 and 12 in Victoria, Australia, will likely study for the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). This is an educational program administered by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA).
With over 90 subjects to choose from, students are faced with the daunting task of choosing 4 to 6 of them based on what they want to do in the future and the fields they'd like to study.
After all, their VCE grades are what will get them the ATAR (Australian Territory Tertiary Admission Rank) that's used as one of the considerations for getting into universities or Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes.
When choosing their subjects, students might be interested in trying to game the system by choosing easier subjects to make getting the best results more likely.
However, it's not as simple as that.
How VCE Is Graded
Before we can talk about the easiest VCE subjects, we need to look at how different VCE subjects are graded.
VCE Assessments and Exams
As part of every VCE subject, students will have a combination of school-assessed coursework (SAC), school-assessed tasks (SAT), and external examination. What these are and how many you have to do can depend on the subject, but once you've completed all of them, you'll be given a “study score” for the subject.
VCE Study Scores
Every student for each VCE subject is given a study score between 0 and 50 with the latter being the best. The score isn't the actual score you got on your coursework, assessments, or exams, but rather where you rank in comparison to other students in the same VCE subject.
The average-scoring student is given 30 and this is the score that most students will get as the scores are given out according to a distribution curve, which means far fewer students will be given the scores towards either end of the scale.
VCE Scaling
Because different exams and assessments have different difficulties and there are over 90 different VCE subjects, VCE study scores also “scale”.
Scaling is the process whereby the VCAA compares the students across different VCE subjects and adjusts the study scores for subjects based on a combination of factors, including how the students in said subject did in other subjects.
For example, if all the best-performing students from subject A ended up scoring a 30 in subject B and performing poorly in subject C, this would indicate that A is the easiest subject, B is of average difficulty, and C is a difficult subject.
To account for this, you would scale the scores in subject A downwards as they're likely too high, you could leave subject B's study scores as they were, and increase subject C's study scores to fairly reflect just how difficult it was.
With some maths, a lot of data from thousands of students across dozens of subjects, the VCAA does this for all the subjects, then adjusts scores so that they're both fair and comparable to one another.
This does mean that a 30 no longer represents the average student in that particular subject. In subjects that scale, the average score will no longer be 30, but it's worth noting that scaling isn't applied identically across every study score and higher scores are less likely to be scaled or scaled by less than scores closer to the average.
The most important thing about scaling is that not only does it allow comparisons across subjects, but it also means that no student will be disadvantaged by the VCE subjects that they choose to study.
Students won't be punished for choosing “difficult” subjects because even if they do well, their scores will be scaled up. Similarly, choosing “easy” subjects in an attempt to game the system won't work either as these will have their scores scaled down.
What Are the Easiest VCE Subjects?
Remember that difficulty is relevant and what one student finds easy, another may find incredibly difficult. Scaling also makes “easier” subjects worth less by scaling them down and “harder” subjects scale up.
What it all means is that it doesn't really matter how hard or easy the subjects you choose are, the important thing is that you do well in them.
There's something to be said for having a manageable workload, too, and if you only pick the hardest VCE subjects because they'll scale up, but then end up overwhelmed and unable to keep up with the workload and perform poorly in assessments and exams, then even scaling won't help you. A really bad result won't miraculously scale up to a good one, especially if you really mess up.
There are still some subjects that are generally thought of as easy by students. As every student is different, though, we can't say for sure that you'll find them easier or even that they are easy, but these are the subjects that are commonly thought of as easy.
Physical Education (PE)
Since PE focuses a lot on sports, fitness, and health-related topics, a lot of students tend to think it's an easier subject.
PE does include theory, too, but because it's seen as “less academic” by some students, it's considered to be easy.
PE is also a subject that historically scales down, which for many students, equates with it being “easy”. However, it doesn't matter if PE is easy or not if it's a subject that you'll need for your future career or a subject you enjoy.
It's much easier to perform exceptionally in subjects you like and enjoy or subjects that you know you need to do well in because it's part of your ambitions for the future.
Health and Human Development (HHD)
Health and Human Development is another VCE subject that students regularly consider to be really easy. The reputation isn't helped by the fact that HHD scaled down even more than PE.
PE has tended to scale down by 2 or 3, but HHD often scales down by 3 or 4 and is one of the highest scaling subjects historically.
Combine this with the fact that it's also one of the most popular VCE subjects (it was the 4th most popular in 2022) and you get the reputation that it's a subject that students are being drawn to because it's easy.
Food Studies
VCE Food Studies includes food preparation, nutrition, and understanding the principles of a balanced diet. The assessments involve cooking and for one reason or another, subjects like this are often thought of as being easier.
The exact reasons behind this are quite complex, but one particular reason is that vocational subjects are often perceived by students as being easier than academic subjects. Again, this isn't necessarily true and different students will find some subjects difficult while others find them quite easy.
The biggest mistake you could make is thinking that any subject will be easy, not putting the effort in, and then ending up with a fairly poor study score that's then subject to some heavy scaling, such as food studies, which has seen study scores of 30 brought down to as low as 23!
Visual Communication Design (VCD)
Again, scaling is one of the reasons behind this subject being thought of as easy. In 2022, Visual Communication Design scaled down by up to 4 points.
Other visual arts subjects like Studio Arts and Media scaled down by up to 5 and 4 points respectively, but remember that the scaling isn't applied universally across study scores; not every student has their scores slashed by the same amount.
The very best students in all of these subjects tend to see their study scores scaled down less, but there is always the risk of falling into the range that gets scaled down a lot (usually closer to the average performing student).
Legal Studies
VCE Legal Studies doesn't scale down too much, but that isn't really why it's seen as "easy". Instead, we should really say that VCE Legal Studies is more accessible as a subject in the way that it offers an introduction to law, society, and politics for students who may be interested in these areas.
The reason we could talk about it as an easy subject is that moving from VCE Legal Studies to a law degree will likely be quite a jump. Many law students will look back on VCE Legal Studies as a walk in the park relative to what they ended up having to study.
How to Get Help with Any VCE Subject
Easy or difficult, your goal with every VCE subject is to do as well as you can and get the best study score possible so that you have plenty of options out of school.
In any VCE subject, you can get help from private tutors. Whether it's supposedly “easy” subjects or mastering revision and study skills, there are tutors for all budgets and levels.
Shop around and find the right tutor for you and the VCE subjects that you choose.
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