The species was first examined and named "Sillago bassensis" by Georges Cuvier in 1829 from the holotype specimen collected in Western Port of Victoria, which lies on the Bass Strait. A number of re-examinations of the fish commonly called 'school whiting' during the 1980s confirmed the presence of two possible subspecies, which were termed by McKay "Sillago bassensis bassensis" and "Sillago bassensis flindersi", the Western school whiting and Eastern school whiting respectively. McKay hypothesized the two species diverged during the last ice age which left a land bridge from mainland Australia to Tasmania open during the Pleistocene, effectively isolating two pockets of fish, allowing genetic divergence. These two subspecies are now treated as separate species, despite a relatively young divergence time.