WACE exams: the timetable shape and a six-week study plan
WACE written examinations run from late October to mid November each year, with the personalised timetable published by SCSA months beforehand. Everest Tutoring plans backwards from it in six weeks: four weeks of past papers by topic, one week of full papers under time, and a final week of error-fixing only. Practice exams are marked and returned each week.
Written by Aaron, Tutor. Updated 13 September 2026
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What the exam period looks like
Written examinations sit in a block from late October into mid November. Practical and performance examinations run earlier, from around the start of October, so students in those courses lose study weeks the written-only students still have.
SCSA publishes the timetable well ahead, and every student's version is different. Print it, mark the gaps between your own exams, and build the plan around those gaps rather than around a generic calendar: two exams on consecutive days changes what the week before them can be used for.
The six-week plan
This is the schedule Everest ATAR classes follow into the exam block. It is deliberately front-loaded with topic work and ends with almost no new practice at all.
| Week | Focus | What a student actually does |
|---|---|---|
| 6 weeks out | Diagnose | One past paper per course, untimed, marked honestly. List every topic that cost marks. |
| 5 weeks out | Weakest topics | Past-paper questions by topic from that list, hardest first, with the syllabus point open beside them. |
| 4 weeks out | Weakest topics | Same again on the next tier of topics. Rewrite every question you got wrong last week, from scratch. |
| 3 weeks out | Full papers, open time | One full paper per course with notes allowed, then mark it against the published marking key. |
| 2 weeks out | Full papers, exam conditions | One full paper per course under the real time limit, no notes, in one sitting. |
| Exam week | Error log only | No new papers. Reread your own error log, redo the questions on it, sleep properly. |
The two habits that decide the block
First, mark your own work against the published marking key rather than checking answers. The key shows where marks are awarded, which is usually for working a student skipped.
Second, keep an error log per course: the question, what you did, what the key wanted. In the last week that log is the only revision material worth reading, and it is the reason Everest classes sit a marked paper before every assessment block rather than only before the exams.
Sources: School Curriculum and Standards Authority · Tertiary Institutions Service Centre
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