Which WACE subject scales the highest?

In the latest (2025) scaling, Chinese: Second Language scaled the highest of WACE courses with 50+ candidates, followed by Mathematics Specialist and French: Second Language.

Should I choose a WACE subject because it scales well?

Generally, no. Scaling rewards how well you perform relative to everyone else in that subject, so a strong result in a subject you're good at usually beats a weak result in a higher-scaling subject you find much harder. Choose subjects you can excel in — scaling follows performance.

Do languages and higher mathematics scale well in the WACE?

Higher-level mathematics consistently scales near the top because it attracts academically strong cohorts. Languages vary — in some systems background-speaker language courses scale among the highest, in others they don't — so use the ranked list rather than assuming. Chinese: Second Language, Mathematics Specialist and French: Second Language led the 2025 list.

Which WACE Subjects Scale Best in 2026? (WA)

Data source: TISC scaled-score percentiles, report TR320C (2025) · 2025 data · checked July 2026How we verify →

In the latest (2025) WACE scaling, Chinese: Second Language, Mathematics Specialist and French: Second Language scaled the highest of WACE courses with 50+ candidates, while Chinese: First Language scaled the lowest. Here are the top and bottom 10 of WACE courses with 50+ candidates, with a link to each subject’s full scaling table. The 2026 figures are released in December 2026 — until then, 2025 is the best guide.

Highest-scaling WACE courses with 50+ candidates

#	Subject	Mean scaled score /100
1	Chinese: Second Language	70.1
2	Mathematics Specialist	69.2
3	French: Second Language	68.4
4	Japanese: Second Language	68.4
5	Mathematics Methods	64.6
6	Ancient History	64.2
7	Literature	64.2
8	Chemistry	63.2
9	Italian: Second Language	62.9
10	Physics	62.7

Lowest-scaling WACE courses with 50+ candidates

Subject	Mean scaled score /100
Earth and Environmental Science	54.9
Engineering Studies	54.9
Outdoor Education	54.7
Marine and Maritime Studies	54.5
Media Production and Analysis	53.9
English as an Additional Language or Dialect	53.6
Integrated Science	51.9
Applied Information Technology	51.4
Health Studies	51.4
Chinese: First Language	49.7

Should you pick a subject because it scales?

The pattern is consistent year to year: the most demanding courses scale up because they attract academically strong cohorts. But that doesn’t mean you should choose a subject just because it sits near the top of this list.

Scaling rewards how well you perform relative to everyone else in that subject. A strong result in a subject you’re genuinely good at will usually beat a weak result in a higher-scaling subject you find brutal. Pick courses you can excel in and enjoy — scaling follows performance, not the other way around.

Curious about a specific subject? Open its page from the full WACE scaling list, or read how the WACE ATAR is calculated.

WACE scaling FAQ

Ranked by mean scaled score /100, from the TISC 2025 Course/Subject Statistics Summary — Scaled Scores for Specified Percentiles (TR320C). Scaled-score distributions from TISC’s 2025 course statistics (report TR320C). TISC and SCSA standardise combined marks before scaling, so WA publishes no raw-mark-to-scaled-score conversion — for any raw mark there is a range of scaled scores. These figures are indicative of how a course scaled, not a per-mark lookup.