When to start SACE past exams: Where to find them and how to use them in Stage 2

Where do I find official SACE past exams?

On the SACE Board website, open your subject and look for two pages:

The SACE Board says past exams and sample exams made for e-exam subjects are a good way to practise in conditions very similar to the real exam. It also has a demo e-exam for getting used to the system.

Not every subject has a written exam. The SACE Board's three types of external assessment are investigations, performances and examinations, so check what your subject's 30% actually is.

On ExamExplained, each subject with an exam has an exam page with strategy and topic links: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, Mathematical Methods, Specialist Mathematics, General Mathematics, English Literary Studies, Legal Studies, Economics and Modern History. All of them are listed on the SACE exams hub.

Topic by topic during the year

From Term 1, once a topic is taught:

1. Find the past exam questions on that topic (the short-answer and extended questions are easiest to pull out).
2. Do them with notes closed, then mark against the solutions or marking information where published, or ask your teacher.
3. Log each mistake in your notes under the topic, and turn it into a flashcard.

This builds exam-style thinking alongside your school-assessed tasks, which are 70% of the subject.

When should I do full timed papers?

Once most of the course has been taught, usually in the second half of the year. A sensible order:

• Before your school's practice or trial exams: one or two full papers under timed conditions.
• Between practice exams and November: the remaining recent papers, timed, spaced out so you can fix weaknesses between them.
• Final weeks: redo the questions you got wrong, rather than hunting for new papers.

Because only a few years are published per subject, don't burn them all early.

How to use subject assessment advice

Subject assessment advice is the SACE Board's commentary on how students went in each assessment type that year. Use it to:

• see which questions or skills most students found hard;
• learn what separates higher-band responses from weaker ones;
• check how your school-assessed work (folios, investigations) is judged at moderation.

Read the advice for the same year as the paper you just did, then re-mark your answer against it.

Caveats: changed outlines and older papers

• Subject outlines change. The SACE Board made subject improvements for teaching from 2025, recorded in a change log at the front of each outline. Biology, for example, reduced its exam's multiple-choice questions from 15 to 10 from 2026, and the Board notes that content in past exams may not reflect future exams.
• Older papers (before recent changes) are still useful for skills, but check each question against your current outline before you learn from it.
• Unofficial papers from other sources are not SACE Board papers. Use them for extra practice, but trust the official papers and advice for format and standard.
• Copyright. Past exams belong to the SACE Board. Link to them and download them for your own study; don't repost them.

To see how exam results feed your ATAR, read how SACE Stage 2 assessment works and try the SACE ATAR calculator. Back to the series: starting Year 12 in 2027.