For 2026 planning, the latest available TISC scaling data is 2025. In that dataset, 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. We will re-stamp the rankings when TISC publishes the next dataset.
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.
Frequently asked questions
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.
