The short answer
In each SACE Stage 2 subject, 70% of your assessment is marked by teachers at your school and 30% externally. You need 200 credits to complete the SACE, including set compulsory subjects. SATAC then builds a university aggregate from your best 90 Stage 2 credits and ranks it as your ATAR, so steady work across the whole year counts most.
How Stage 2 subjects are assessed
In each Stage 2 subject, 70% of your assessment tasks are marked by teachers at your school, and the other 30% is marked outside your school by SACE markers.[1] Stage 2 grades run from A+ at the top to E- at the bottom.[1]
The external part is often an exam. In Chemistry, for example, it is an examination worth 30%.[3] Check each subject's external assessment page for its format.
What the 70:30 split means for how you study
- Most of your grade is decided before exam season. A plan that ramps up only in Term 4 misses most of the marks.
- Map every school assessment due date across both semesters, and plan your weeks around them. How to manage your study time shows a simple way to block it.
- Keep reviewing earlier topics as you go. Spaced review beats a late cram for keeping what you learnt.[5]
Test yourself rather than rereading. Practice testing has some of the strongest evidence of any study method.[6][7] Active recall is the place to start.
Each subject's external assessment page is where the SACE Board posts past exams. Chemistry's, for example, lists the 2023 to 2025 papers.[3] Do them timed once you have covered the content, then redo every question you lost marks on a week later.
What you need to complete the SACE
You need 200 credits.[1][2] Within them, under the current rules, you need at least:[2]
- a C grade or better in the Stage 1 compulsory requirements: Exploring Identities and Futures, literacy and numeracy,[2]
- a C- or better in Activating Identities and Futures, which takes the Research Project's place as the Stage 2 compulsory requirement from 2026,[2] and
- a C- or better in 60 more Stage 2 credits.[2]
How SATAC turns Stage 2 results into an ATAR
To get an ATAR you first need a university aggregate. SATAC builds it from the scaled scores of your best 90 credits of Stage 2 study.[4] Scaled scores are out of 20 for a 20-credit subject and out of 10 for a 10-credit subject.[4]
- Your best three 20-credit Tertiary Admission Subjects make up 60 credits.[4]
- The best result from the flexible option makes up the other 30.[4]
- Your aggregate, out of 90, is compared with everyone else's and adjusted for the share of your age group who finished Year 12, which gives your ATAR from 0 to 99.95.[4]
If you do not attempt a subject's external component, such as the exam, its scaled score is 0.0.[4] Skipping the exam can sink a subject's contribution even if your school work was strong.
Sources
- [1]SACE Board of South Australia. Stage 2 (Year 12). www.sace.sa.edu.au/studying/your-sace/year-12
- [2]SACE Board of South Australia. SACE Data: completion. www.sace.sa.edu.au/web/sace-data/completion
- [3]SACE Board of South Australia. Chemistry: external assessment (an example of a subject page with past exams). www.sace.sa.edu.au/web/chemistry/external-assessment
- [4]South Australian Tertiary Admissions Centre (SATAC). ATAR. www.satac.edu.au/atar
- [5]Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
- [6]Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266
- [7]Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659–701. doi.org/10.3102/0034654316689306