WACE Human Biology exam 2026Exam: Thu 5 Nov · SCSA timetable
Your WACE Human Biology exam:
When and how long
- Human Biology9.20 am start3 h plus 10 min reading time
SCSA: arrive 30 minutes before the examination start time. Every ATAR written exam has 10 minutes reading time and 3 hours working time unless otherwise indicated. The timetable is final, and no allowance is made for misreading it.
Source: 2026 Year 12 ATAR course written examinations timetable (SCSA), checked Wednesday 23 September 2026. Where a start time, reading time or duration isn't shown, the timetable doesn't publish it: check your personal timetable and the front of your paper.
What the exam covers
We don't have past-paper frequency data for this exam, so here is the course, module by module. Make sure every module is covered.
Night-before and exam-morning checklists
The night before
Exam-week survival kit: The last 7 days · The night before and exam morning · What to bring, and what's banned · How to use reading time · If you're sick or something goes wrong · Handling exam-week stress.
Last-week revision
WACE Human Biology cram sheet
Key formulas, definitions and facts copied from our Human Biology syllabus pages. One page when printed.
Unit 3: Homeostasis and Disease
A pathogen is any agent that causes disease, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, multicellular parasites and prions. Pathogens carry antigens that the immune system can recognise as non-self, which triggers the specific immune response covered in the immune system topic.
Herd immunity is the protection a population gains when a large enough proportion of its members are immune that the pathogen can no longer spread efficiently. Even unvaccinated individuals are protected because the chain of transmission is broken. It is a population-level effect, not an individual one.
Antagonistic hormones have opposite effects on the same variable, so the body can move it in either direction. Insulin and glucagon are antagonistic: insulin lowers blood glucose while glucagon raises it. Controlling a variable with two opposing hormones gives precise, two-way regulation around the set point.
The central nervous system is the brain and spinal cord, where information is processed. The peripheral nervous system is the network of nerves outside the brain and spinal cord that carries information to and from the central nervous system. Together they form the complete nervous system.
Unit 4: Human Variation and Evolution
In biology, fitness is an individual's relative ability to survive and reproduce in its environment, measured by the number of fertile offspring it leaves. It does not mean physically strong or healthy; an organism is fitter if it leaves more surviving, reproducing offspring than others in the same population.
Multiple alleles exist when a gene has more than two versions present in a population, even though each diploid individual carries only two of them. The ABO blood group gene, with its IA, IB and i alleles, is the standard human example and produces discontinuous variation in four distinct blood group categories.
Gene flow is the transfer of alleles from one population to another through the movement and breeding of individuals or the dispersal of gametes. It tends to reduce genetic differences between populations and can introduce new alleles, so a lack of gene flow allows populations to diverge genetically over time.
The fossil evidence shows hominins walked upright long before brain size increased greatly. Early hominins such as Australopithecus were bipedal but had ape-sized brains. Do not claim large brains drove the move to two legs; bipedalism came first.