The General Achievement Test (GAT) is a compulsory assessment completed by students undertaking the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). Although it is not tied to a specific subject, the test plays an important role in maintaining the fairness, reliability and integrity of the VCE assessment system.

The GAT assesses students’ general capabilities in areas such as literacy, numeracy, analytical reasoning and written communication. These skills underpin academic performance across subjects and provide valuable information about students’ ability to interpret information, reason with evidence and communicate ideas clearly.

Within the VCE system, GAT results contribute to several key processes. They support the statistical moderation of school-based assessments across schools and provide evidence when Derived Examination Scores must be calculated due to illness or other disruption. For this reason, the assessment forms an important part of the quality assurance framework used in VCE assessment.