Series
Schools that Excel 2025
Celebrating Victorian schools that have improved their end-of-year VCE performance over the past decade.
Schools that Excel 2025: Find out your school’s VCE results over the past decade
The Age’s Schools that Excel series celebrates schools that achieve outstanding improvement in their VCE results over a decade. Find out who won and use our dashboard to track your school’s results.
- Craig Butt and Noel Towell
These students are ditching screens for boots and garden tools to dig up VCE success
A 200-acre property replete with apricot and lemon orchards is helping this independent school stand out among its rivals.
- Caroline Schelle
This sporty school changed its tune and danced its way to VCE stardom
This boys’ school, known for being a feeder to the AFL draft, has added dance to its repertoire. And the results are starting to show.
- Bridie Smith
The school that came back from the brink and is now at the top of town
A vertical curriculum, high-rise school building and soaring enrolments has this school reaching new heights of VCE achievement.
- Noel Towell
The game-changer that helped these students find their path
The inaugural winner of the Schools that Excel vocational category has led a bumper crop of pupils on new career directions.
- Nicole Precel
This school’s ‘KISS and catch up’ approach became its secret to success
One of the best lessons this school learnt from the pandemic was to keep it simple – and the results are starting to show.
- Bridie Smith
Religion and table tennis made this school one of the state’s most improved
St Mary’s was the first Coptic Orthodox school outside Egypt when it opened, but the principal says religion is just one element contributing to her school’s success.
- Bridie Smith
Other series
Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2026
This year’s laugh fest has kicked off, with more than 2000 performers stepping up to the mic. Here, our writers take a closer look
- 10 stories
Hate of origin: Inside football’s most intense rivalry
Essendon and Hawthorn have hated each other for more than 40 years, from some old-fashioned thuggery and a fake drug scandal in the mid-80s to last year’s failed bid by the Hawks to poach the Bombers’ captain.
- 5 stories