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Many students who love maths fall for it while breezing through arithmetic in primary school.
Not so Eva White, who was drawn to it in kindergarten: “I just remember loving to solve patterns,” she says.
The Bacchus Marsh Grammar student is among year 11s who have accelerated through VCE general maths, helping the school achieve one of the most sustained improvements in the subject in recent years statewide.
In 2018, just two students from the private school, to the west of Melbourne, received a study score of 40 or higher in the subject, formerly called further mathematics. Results have soared nearly every year since – 53 students received top scores in 2024, and 44 last year.
“They’re going great guns,” says Dr Debra Penny, head of maths at the school’s Maddingley campus.
Bachus Marsh Grammar’s maths success is revealed in the Victorian Schools Guide, The Age’s new interactive dashboard that will allow parents and students to examine the performance of the state’s government, Catholic and independent schools.
The dashboard will be updated regularly and feature new sections in the future, to help guide students and their families in school choices.
The dashboard reveals Bacchus Marsh Grammar had the fourth-highest number of scores in general mathematics, behind Haileybury College (62), Balwyn High (59), and McKinnon College (53).
General maths, the state’s second-most popular subject (behind English), was the top subject for 40+ scores at 100 Victorian schools in 2025.
This is not the first time Bacchus Marsh Grammar has been featured in The Age for strong academic results – it was our Schools that Excel award winner for rural/regional schools last year for its improvement in VCE performance over the past decade.
A rapid expansion in Bacchus Marsh Grammar’s enrolments – from about 1000 students in 2008 to 4500 today – has partly boosted the number of students with high results.
The school has also undergone a demographic shift, as students, many with Indian and South-East Asian heritage, use its bus services to attend from Werribee, Hoppers Crossing and Point Cook.
“The kids work hard, the parents are invested, and we’re invested – and that three-way partnership is taking off,” Penny says.
Students who excel in general mathematics in early high school years are encouraged to take the year 12 subject a year early.
In 2018, these students comprised a fraction of the cohort. In the past three years, year 11s made up between 20 and 50 per cent of VCE general maths students. And the results are showing – more than half of the top results in 2024 came from students in year 11.
“It really gives them a multifaceted advantage in that it gives the kids a taste of VCE early,” says leading maths teacher David Hunter. “It helps bring this culture of success because the year 12s know they have to compete against the year 11s.”
Year 12 students still achieve some of the highest scores, including a recent score of 50. “We’re not just relying on our accelerants to get the result,” Hunter says.
In 2018, the school also shifted its structure from a traditional junior and senior school to include a middle school for years 5 to 8. Penny says there has been a big focus on maths through the middle years.
“There’s a lot more maths Olympiad, competition-type stuff,” she says. “The kids are really working well together culturally across what we’ve been building together in middle school. They work hard, they expect to do homework, they expect to practise. It’s just normal for them. It doesn’t suddenly happen in year 12 at all.”
Eva White recalls the competitive culture in year 7, when a teacher would spin a wheel of names to select two students to race to work through a problem the fastest.
“Everyone in the class was into it, and we all supported each other,” she says.
The rubber really hit the road in year 9, she says, when an extension class pushed her to do maths nearly every day.
“I think about that time really fondly, where I got to really learn as much as I could.”
In 2025, her score of 45 put her among at least 2310 students from 351 schools and institutions who achieved a general maths score of 40 or higher.
For White, doing maths early has freed up time for her to pursue another passion in year 12.
“I am not really taking a maths class,” she says. “After school I want to study film, so I’m trying to focus on that.”
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Jackson Graham is an education reporter at The Age. He was previously an explainer reporter.Connect via email.From our partners
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