VCE English & EAL Text List 2027: What’s New, What’s Gone, and How to Choose
VCAA has approved 20 List 1 texts for VCE English and EAL study in 2027. Seven texts are new – including Edenglassie, Educated, The Holdovers and Picnic at Hanging Rock – and seven 2026 texts leave the list, including Born a Crime and Rainbow’s End. Below: the full official list, exactly what changed, and how the list works.
Source: the official VCAA 2027 English/EAL Text List (published February 2026), cross-checked against the 2026 list. Checked 12 July 2026.
Key takeaways
- 20 texts sit on List 1 (the text-response list) for 2027; your school selects the text(s) you study from it.
- New for 2027 (7): Edenglassie · The Lottery and Other Stories · The One Day of the Year · The Holdovers · Picnic at Hanging Rock (film) · Gurrumul · Educated.
- Leaving after 2026 (7): We Have Always Lived in the Castle · Bad Dreams and Other Stories · Rainbow’s End · High Ground · Sunset Boulevard · Requiem for a Beast · Born a Crime.
- The number VCAA prints beside each text is its years on the list – every text removed this year had reached four, so the 2027 texts marked “year 4” are in their final listed year.
What’s new on the 2027 list (7 texts)
- Edenglassie – Melissa Lucashenko (novel, Australian)
- The Lottery and Other Stories – Shirley Jackson (short stories)
- The One Day of the Year – Alan Seymour (play, Australian)
- The Holdovers – dir. Alexander Payne (film)
- Picnic at Hanging Rock – dir. Peter Weir (film, Australian)
- Gurrumul – dir. Paul Williams (multimodal, Australian)
- Educated – Tara Westover (non-fiction)
What’s leaving after 2026 (7 texts)
These texts appear on the 2026 list but not on the 2027 list – if your school teaches them this year, they cannot be set texts next year: We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson), Bad Dreams and Other Stories (Tessa Hadley), Rainbow’s End (Jane Harrison), High Ground (dir. Stephen Johnson), Sunset Boulevard (dir. Billy Wilder), Requiem for a Beast (Matt Ottley) and Born a Crime (Trevor Noah). All seven had reached their fourth listed year.
The full 2027 List 1 (all 20 texts)
| Text | Author / Creator | Type | Year on list (2027) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regeneration | Pat Barker | Novel | 2nd |
| Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë | Novel | 3rd |
| My Brilliant Career | Miles Franklin | Novel | 4th (final) |
| Chronicle of a Death Foretold | Gabriel García Márquez | Novel | 4th (final) |
| Orbital | Samantha Harvey | Novel | 2nd |
| Edenglassie | Melissa Lucashenko | Novel | 1st (new) |
| Ghost Wall | Sarah Moss | Novel | 3rd |
| The Memory Police | Yōko Ogawa | Novel | 4th (final) |
| The Lottery and Other Stories | Shirley Jackson | Short stories | 1st (new) |
| The Complete Stories | David Malouf | Short stories | 3rd |
| The One Day of the Year | Alan Seymour | Play | 1st (new) |
| Twelfth Night | William Shakespeare | Play | 3rd |
| Oedipus the King | Sophocles | Play | 4th (final) |
| Selected Poems | Langston Hughes | Poetry | 2nd |
| New and Selected Poems, Volume One | Mary Oliver | Poetry | 3rd |
| The Holdovers | dir. Alexander Payne | Film | 1st (new) |
| Picnic at Hanging Rock | dir. Peter Weir | Film | 1st (new) |
| Gurrumul | dir. Paul Williams | Multimodal | 1st (new) |
| We Come with This Place | Debra Dank | Non-fiction | 2nd |
| Educated | Tara Westover | Non-fiction | 1st (new) |
How the VCE text list actually works
Each year VCAA’s Text Advisory Panel proposes texts and VCAA approves the list for Units 3–4 study – the official 2027 wording: texts “approved by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) as suitable for study in Units 3 and 4 in 2027”. Your school – not you – selects which List 1 text(s) you study. The list refreshes on a rolling cycle: every text has a number showing its years on the list, new texts enter at year 1, and every text that left this year had reached year 4. A separate List 2 – the mentor texts for the Creating Texts framework – is published in the same official document.
The official document is a free download from VCAA: 2027 VCE English/EAL Text List (VCAA, Word document).
Choosing and preparing for 2027
Most students don’t choose their text – but if your school surveys preferences, or you are weighing subjects for 2027, two honest observations from the data: the four final-year texts (My Brilliant Career, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Memory Police, Oedipus the King) carry the deepest bank of existing resources, while the seven new texts have almost none yet – which cuts both ways: nothing to lean on, and nothing recycled for assessors to be tired of. Either way, the skill that moves your mark is the same: build it with our guides to writing a VCE text response, the oral presentation and argument analysis – or work with our VCE English tutors for 2027.
Choosing texts is step one. Our new guide to studying VCE English covers what comes next – the three exam sections, the 25/25/50 assessment split and the weekly writing system that lifts scores.
Doing Literature as well, or instead? The 2027 VCE Literature text list is out too – all 30 approved texts, with the eight new additions flagged.
FAQ
How many texts are on the VCE English text list for 2027?
20 texts on List 1: 8 novels, 2 short-story collections, 3 plays, 2 poetry collections, 2 films, 1 other multimodal text and 2 non-fiction texts. List 2 (Creating Texts mentor texts) is published in the same VCAA document.
Which texts are new to the VCE English list in 2027?
Seven: Edenglassie, The Lottery and Other Stories, The One Day of the Year, The Holdovers, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gurrumul and Educated.
Is Born a Crime still on the VCE text list in 2027?
No. Born a Crime finishes its fourth listed year in 2026 and is not on the 2027 list – along with We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Bad Dreams and Other Stories, Rainbow’s End, High Ground, Sunset Boulevard and Requiem for a Beast.
Where is the official VCAA 2027 text list?
On the VCAA website under the English/EAL study design planning page, published February 2026 as a Word document (linked above). This page is checked against the official list – always confirm your set texts with your school.
Written by Haobo Zhang – 98 ATAR, University of Melbourne Biomedicine; founder of HZ Tutoring. Checked against the official VCAA 2027 and 2026 text lists, 12 July 2026.