If you thought VCE season was just about panicked cramming and red bulls in the library, you’ve clearly missed the shift in the air. Last year, more than 13,000 students across Victoria walked into their final exams with a little extra help in their back pocket. Whether it was a quiet, empty room to hide in, extra time to process the questions, or software that reads the text out loud, the system is straining under the weight of these requests.

That number—13,000 out of roughly 50,000 total students—is a 19 per cent jump from the year before. It isn't just a slight uptick; it’s a record high that has everyone from parents to exam supervisors scratching their heads. You’d reckon that with numbers this big, the VCAA, which handles the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, might be tightening the screws. They’ve made the process smoother, relying more on a school’s internal judgment to decide who needs a hand.

We’d often get a long, long list of kids, and we’d have to put them in separate rooms, or sometimes in an individual room and I didn’t mind because you could absolutely see the look on the kid that they needed it, and that’s fair enough … but a lot of those students who had a special consideration didn’t use it.

That insight comes from Russell Jackson, a veteran exam supervisor who has spent years watching the pressure cooker boil over. He’s seen the list of students requiring "special arrangements" grow longer with every passing exam season. It’s a curious trend where students fight tooth and nail for the exemption, only to sit the exam like everyone else when the time comes. Some might call it a safety net; others see it as a symptom of a generation that’s constantly on edge.

The Mental Health Surge

It isn't just a bit of pre-exam jitters anymore. Mental health is now the lead reason for these applications, jumping from 40.8 per cent in 2021 to 43.9 per cent last year. This is a massive shift that tracks with the post-COVID reality many teenagers are currently living. Government schools have been hit particularly hard. Mental health exemption applications there have almost tripled in the last four years, climbing from 1,347 to 3,322.

While public schools are the bulk of the data, the private sector is pulling its weight in these requests too. Independent and private schools, which look after about 21 per cent of the state’s students, made up 37 per cent of the mental health applications last year. That’s a climb from 1,205 in 2021 to nearly 3,000 in 2025. It suggests that whether you’re paying eye-watering fees in a leafy suburb or attending the local state school, the same anxiety about the ATAR score is universal.

Behind the Bureaucracy

Mariko Francis, a lecturer in inclusive education at RMIT, argues that we shouldn’t just assume the system is being played. She points to recent disability inclusion reforms as a driver for the change. These reforms force schools to look at a student’s functional needs rather than just ticking a box. If a student has historically needed adjustments to learn, it makes sense that they’d need those same adjustments during their final exams.

The admin side of things is a nightmare. Yehudi Blacher, a governance expert, pulled back the curtain on the VCAA in a 2025 report. He found that a tiny team of just three staff members is manually wading through over 10,000 applications. It’s a bottleneck that causes delays and has schools pulling their hair out just trying to navigate the paperwork. Approval rates hover around 99 per cent across all school sectors.

The process has become less about gatekeeping and more about processing a deluge of requests.

A Level Playing Field?

So, what actually happens if you get approved? You’re not dodging the test. You get access to things like Braille papers, extra rest breaks, or text-to-voice technology. These provisions are meant to provide a level playing field. They ensure a student’s brain doesn't get in the way of showing off what they know. The catch, as Jackson noted, is that the very act of seeking these provisions might reflect the crushing weight of parent expectations.

Students feel like they’re running a race where everyone is watching, and their entire future hangs on one three-hour paper. When parents get involved, they often see these exemptions as an extra insurance policy to make sure their child doesn’t drop the ball. It’s a cycle of stress where the cure—getting a separate room to calm down—might just be another sign of how intense the VCE has become. The VCAA continues to manage this increasing volume of requests while the pressure on students remains high.