Every December, Victoria holds its breath for one morning. On 16 December 2021, nearly 65,000 students finally learned how their VCE years would be remembered. By the next day, the honour roll dropped—the list showing who had cracked the 40-point barrier in at least one subject. If you’re here, someone you know probably made that cut, or you’re trying to understand what it all means. Here’s what the 2021 data actually shows.

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Announcement Date: 17 Dec 2021 ·
High Achievers Metric: 40+ study scores ·
Number of Students: 13,935 ·
Key Sources: The Age, Herald Sun ·
Searchable By: School, subject, name

Quick snapshot

1Confirmed facts
2What’s unclear
  • Exact count of perfect 99.95 ATARs across all schools
  • Breakdown of 40+ scores by individual subject statewide
  • Per-school exact counts beyond top performers
3Timeline signal
  • 16 Dec 2021: VCE results and ATARs released at 7:00am
  • 17 Dec 2021: 40+ High Achievers list published at 12:05am
  • Both available via official joint results website
4What’s next
  • Premier’s VCE Awards recognise Top All-Round achievers (46+ in 5 studies)
  • Year-on-year comparisons available via Quppa.net archive
  • Searchable databases let users filter by school or subject

These core facts anchor everything that follows in the 2021 honour roll coverage.

Label Value
Year 2021
Published 17 Dec 2021
Qualification 40+ study scores
Coverage Victoria statewide
Databases The Age, quppa.net

What is the VCE honour roll?

The VCE honour roll—also called the High Achievers list—is essentially a public record of students who crossed a meaningful threshold. To land on it, a student needed at least one study score of 40 or more out of a possible 50 in any VCE subject during 2021. The Top Scores database (Victorian high achievers aggregator) compiles these results, making them searchable by school, subject, or individual name. Major outlets like The Age and Victorian government channels (official announcement) published their own versions within days of the official release.

Relation to VCE High Achievers Award

The honour roll and the High Achievers Award overlap but aren’t identical. The honour roll captures every student with a single 40+ score. The High Achievers Award—which the Victorian government administers—goes further. The Victorian Government awards page (official criteria) explains that recipients must have study scores of 46 or higher in at least five VCE studies. That puts them in rarer company than the standard honour roll.

Premier’s VCE Awards honour roll

Beyond the daily lists, the Premier’s VCE Awards serve as Victoria’s formal recognition ceremony for top performers. These awards follow a similar structure to the honour roll but include additional filters. The government site lists recipients for various award categories, each tied to specific score thresholds. For students aiming for the top tier, hitting 46+ across five subjects is the stated benchmark.

Bottom line: The honour roll is broad—any 40+ score gets you listed. The Premier’s Awards are selective, requiring sustained excellence across multiple subjects.

How is the VCE honour roll determined?

The process flows from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA). Once all VCE exams are marked and scaled, the authority tallies every study score. Anyone hitting 40 or above gets included in the High Achievers list. According to the Premier of Victoria announcement (official government statement), the list went live on the VBA website at 12:05am on Friday, 17 December 2021—one full day after the main results drop. This timing gives students a chance to process their ATAR before seeing where they stand among top scorers.

Criteria for inclusion

The threshold is blunt: 40 or above on any individual subject. Unlike the ATAR, which aggregates overall performance, a single exceptional subject score lands you on the honour roll. Better Education (VCE data aggregator) clarifies that their honour roll focuses on VCE study scores above 40, with no weighting for school reputation or peer performance. This makes it a purer measure of subject-level mastery.

Role of 40+ study scores

A study score of 40 sits roughly in the top 9% of all VCE results for a given subject. It’s not a perfect score—those are rare 50s—but it signals strong understanding. Quppa.net (historical score archive) archives 40+ results dating back to 1998, letting anyone trace how thresholds shift year to year. The 40 mark serves as the floor for official recognition, though the Victorian Government awards page (official award criteria) pushes that floor to 46 for its top-tier recognition.

Bottom line: One 40+ gets you listed. Getting five subjects above 46 puts you in the Premier’s Awards conversation. The distinction matters for students chasing formal recognition.

How many 99.95 ATAR in Victoria?

The 99.95 ATAR represents the highest possible tertiary ranking in Australia—putting a student in the top 0.05% nationally. Exact statewide counts for 2021 aren’t published in a single central registry, which makes pinning down the total tricky. The Better Education database (searchable high achievers list) offers the closest public approximation, with over 14,000 entries for students scoring above 40.

2021 context

What we do know is that Haileybury College alone produced eight students at the 99.95 level—a new school record, according to their Haileybury College results publication (school administration statement). That’s a remarkable concentration from a single institution. The school described the results as among their best in history despite two years of pandemic disruption.

Comparison to top ATARs

Nationally, the 99.95 ATAR is extraordinarily rare. Victoria’s cohort of roughly 65,000 VCE students means only a handful clear that bar each year. Matrix Education (school performance analyst) ranks the top 150 schools by VCE performance metrics, though these rankings weigh multiple factors beyond perfect ATARs alone. For context, Haileybury’s eight students represent a disproportionate share of Victoria’s top tier.

Bottom line: A precise count of 99.95 ATARs across Victoria isn’t publicly available, but Haileybury alone claimed eight in 2021. The rest of the state’s top tier gets distributed across dozens of schools.

What is the VCE High Achievers Award?

The VCE High Achievers Award is the Victorian government’s formal program for recognising students who excel across multiple subjects. It’s different from the honour roll in scope and prestige. While the honour roll captures anyone with a single 40+, the High Achievers Award targets sustained excellence. The Victorian Government awards page (official award information) specifies that recipients need study scores of 46 or higher in at least five VCE studies.

Official recognition

Recipients of the High Achievers Award receive state-level recognition, typically announced through the Premier’s VCE Awards ceremony. These students represent the top tier of Victoria’s graduating class. The award is often cited in school communications as a mark of distinction, and many schools promote their recipients in alumni newsletters and promotional materials.

vic.gov.au details

The Victorian government portal at vic.gov.au maintains the official list of award recipients. The site explains the Premier’s VCE Awards structure, including the Top All-Round Award category. Students are nominated based on their 2021 results, with verification flowing through the VBA. Accessing the full recipient list requires navigating the government’s publications section, where PDFs document each year’s winners.

Bottom line: The High Achievers Award is selective—five subjects above 46 puts you in the running. The honour roll is broader; one 40+ qualifies. Students chasing prestige should aim for the award threshold.

Is 40 a good VCE score?

For most students, a 40 is an excellent result. The VCE scoring system places 40 roughly at the top 9% for any given subject—meaning nine out of ten classmates score lower. Better Education (VCE data aggregator) notes that over 14,000 students achieved at least one 40+ in 2021 out of roughly 65,000 total. That puts the honours threshold at about 21% of the cohort—higher than the per-subject percentage suggests, since students can appear multiple times across subjects.

Benchmark for honour roll

The honour roll uses 40 as its entry point, so from that perspective, the score carries immediate recognition value. Schools like Haileybury publicly celebrate every student who makes the list. Haileybury College (school publication) highlighted their seven students who scored a perfect 50 in at least one subject—sitting above the 40 floor entirely.

ATAR implications

A single 40+ doesn’t guarantee a high ATAR. The tertiary ranking aggregates performance across all studied subjects, with scaling applied. However, multiple 40+ scores strongly correlate with ATARs above 90. Better Education school rankings (performance data) shows schools with high percentages of 40+ scorers tend to produce ATARs in the 90+ range. At Haileybury, 94% of their 2021 graduating class hit 90 or above—placing them in the top 10% nationally.

Bottom line: A 40 is genuinely strong—it lands you on the honour roll and typically signals top-quartile subject performance. But for the highest ATARs, multiple 40+ scores across several subjects matter more.
The upshot

Victoria’s 2021 honour roll shows 13,935 students cleared the 40+ threshold, but only a fraction hit the 46+ across five subjects needed for state-level recognition. For parents and students evaluating school performance, the distinction matters: honour roll counts inflate when a school produces many students with one strong subject, while the Premier’s Awards reward breadth.

Why this matters

Haileybury’s eight 99.95 ATARs from a single year—against a backdrop of two years of pandemic disruption—raise questions about what “normal” VCE performance looks like. Students aiming for top tertiary offers shouldn’t assume their ATAR ceiling is fixed; the correlation between multiple 40+ scores and high ATARs is strong.

Timeline

Date Event
16 Dec 2021 VCE and VCAL results released at 7:00am via joint results website (Premier of Victoria)
16 Dec 2021 Minister for Education James Merlino celebrated the Class of 2021 results (Premier of Victoria)
17 Dec 2021 40+ High Achievers list published at 12:05am on VBA website (Premier of Victoria)
Dec 2021 Haileybury College published 2021 VCE results digital report with detailed breakdowns (Haileybury College)

Clarity on 2021 VCE high achievers

Confirmed

  • Results released 16 December 2021 at 7:00am for nearly 65,000 students
  • 40+ High Achievers list followed on 17 December 2021 at 12:05am
  • 13,935 students achieved at least one study score of 40 or more
  • Haileybury College produced a school record of 8 students at ATAR 99.95
  • 94% of Haileybury’s 2021 cohort achieved ATAR 90 or above
  • Top All-Round VCE High Achiever Award requires 46+ in at least 5 subjects

Unclear

  • Exact total count of 99.95 ATARs across all Victorian schools in 2021
  • Complete per-school breakdown of 40+ score counts from tier-1 sources
  • Year-on-year comparison data for 40+ achievers vs 2020 or 2022
  • Full list of individual perfect subject scores beyond Haileybury examples

What officials said

The wait is finally over for almost 65,000 VCE and VCAL students across Victoria, with the release of results and Australian Tertiary Admission Rankings (ATAR) this morning.

— Premier of Victoria (Government Statement)

Eight Haileybury students, a new record for the VCE, achieved the highest possible Australian Tertiary Admission Ranking (ATAR) of 99.95.

— Haileybury College (School Administration)

Victoria’s top-performing VCE students were recognised for their outstanding academic achievements, with 13,935 students receiving at least one study score of 40 or more out of 50.

— Minister for Education James Merlino (Victorian Government)

The catch

The honour roll is searchable and free to access, but schools with the most 40+ scores don’t necessarily produce the most 99.95 ATARs. Haileybury’s eight perfect scores came from an open-entry school, not an elite selective institution—meaning raw cohort quality plays a bigger role than some school rankings suggest.

Summary

The 2021 VCE honour roll confirms what the Victorian government announced on 17 December: 13,935 students crossed the 40+ threshold, with results flowing from the VBA website within a day of the main ATAR release. Schools like Haileybury dominated the top tier, producing eight students at the maximum ATAR of 99.95 against a backdrop of two pandemic-disrupted years. For prospective students and parents evaluating options, the data is clear: multiple 40+ scores across several subjects—rather than a single exceptional result—open the doors to Victoria’s most competitive tertiary offers. The searchable databases from Top Scores (Victorian high achievers aggregator) and Better Education (VCE data platform) let anyone drill into school-level details, though exact statewide counts of top ATARs remain elusive from public sources.

Is a 99.9 ATAR good?

A 99.9 ATAR puts a student in the top 0.1% nationally. It means admission to virtually any university course in Australia, including medicine, law, and engineering at elite institutions. In practical terms, it signals consistent top performance across all VCE subjects.

What is the highest ATAR anyone has gotten?

The highest possible ATAR is 99.95—the maximum ranking in Australia’s tertiary admission system. Students achieving this are in the top 0.05% of all VCE graduates nationwide. In 2021, Haileybury College alone produced eight such students.

Is the VCE honour roll a big deal?

For students and families, the honour roll signals subject-level excellence—a 40+ score means performing in roughly the top 9% for that subject. Schools often publicise honour roll counts as proof of quality, and it can influence perceptions of institutional performance.

Do you need a 40+ study score to get a 90 ATAR?

Not necessarily. A 90 ATAR requires strong aggregate performance across all subjects, and scaling varies by subject. However, students with multiple 40+ scores almost always achieve ATARs above 90. At Haileybury in 2021, 94% of graduates hit 90 or above.

How many people get a 99.95 ATAR in Victoria?

A precise statewide count for 2021 isn’t publicly released by a single authority. What we know is that Haileybury alone produced eight students at that level. The rest distribute across dozens of schools, with exact numbers available only through aggregated databases like those on Better Education.

What is the ATAR?

ATAR stands for Australian Tertiary Admission Rank. It’s a number between 0 and 99.95 indicating a student’s overall position relative to all other VCE graduates in Australia. Universities use it to allocate course offers, with higher ATARs opening more competitive programs.

What are VCE Study Scores?

A VCE study score measures performance in a specific subject, scaled to account for subject difficulty. Scores range from 0 to 50, with 40+ indicating top-quartile performance. Unlike the ATAR, a study score applies to one subject only and doesn’t aggregate across a student’s full program.