More Transparency in the ADC Practical Exam: What You Need to Know
The Australian Dental Council has just made the most significant changes to its practical examination in years — and if you are preparing right now, you need to understand what has changed and why it matters.
For the first time, the ADC has published how communication is assessed and introduced feedback reports issued with your results. If you have previously failed with no real understanding of why, you now have the tools to find out.
A Major Step Towards Transparency
With a pass rate of 11%, chances are high you are going to fail the ADC practical examination one or more times. And you will continue to fail if you don't know what to improve on. Until now, that information was almost impossible to get — a major and long-standing criticism of the ADC process. These two changes, published in April 2026 on the Handbooks and Materials page, directly address that.
1. The OSCE Communication Rubric Is Now Public
The ADC has published the standard OSCE communication marking rubric used to assess you across all communication stations.
Until now, you knew communication was assessed — but not how. What separated a satisfactory response from a borderline one was invisible. This rubric makes those criteria public for the first time. Treat it as the single most important preparation document for your clinical skills day.
Communication is the part of the exam most people underestimate. Knowing what to say and being able to say it — clearly, in sequence, under time pressure, to a simulated patient who may push back — are two very different skills. That gap is wider than you might expect until you are in the room.
Practise out loud, against the rubric criteria, under timed conditions. Covering all required information in patient-centred language within the allotted time is a skill that only develops through repetition. If you underperform in communication stations, it is rarely because you lack clinical knowledge. It is because you have not done enough speaking practice.
2. You Now Receive a Feedback Report With Your Results
This is the change with the most direct impact on how you prepare after a failed attempt.
From Period 1, 2026, you receive a feedback report alongside your results. For each task you fail, the report identifies which specific rubric criteria were rated unsatisfactory. For the first time, you are told not just that you failed — but precisely where and why.
The ADC announced this change in April 2026 following discussion with the Candidate Reference Group, noting it would use the initial rollout to explore how to extend and refine the feedback it provides.
What the report covers — and what it doesn't. The feedback is targeted: it flags unsatisfactory criteria in failed tasks only. It does not detail criteria rated very good, satisfactory, or borderline, and in some cases you may fail a task without receiving any unsatisfactory flags. It will not always tell the full story — but if you do receive specific feedback, you have a documented starting point for targeted preparation that simply did not exist before.
Read the sample feedback report before your exam so the format is familiar. If you do not pass, cross-reference your feedback directly against the published rubrics to understand what a satisfactory performance looks like for each criterion you missed.
Bottom line
You have been sitting one of Australia's most demanding clinical assessments without knowing how it was judged. You prepared without seeing the criteria, failed without understanding why, and attempted again without knowing what to fix.
That is now changing. A published communication rubric and feedback reports issued with your results are not minor additions — they are a fundamental shift in how openly the ADC communicates its standards. For the first time, you have a real basis for deliberate preparation.
ADC Ready is an independent preparation tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Australian Dental Council.