The NSW Selective test, section by section

Four sections, 93 questions, 155 minutes of testing — and every section worth exactly the same. That last detail decides how you should prepare.

All question counts, timings and weightings on this page come from the NSW Department of Education's published test information for the Selective High School Placement Test.

The Selective High School Placement Test is sat in Year 6, for entry into a selective high school in Year 7. Since the test was restructured, it has had four components rather than three — Writing is now a section in its own right, not an add-on.

The four sections

Reading — 17 questions, 45 minutes

Around 2½ minutes a question, with several questions carrying multiple parts. The texts are demanding: non-fiction, argument, sometimes poetry, and question formats that go well beyond "find the answer in paragraph three".

Expect to meet:

• Inference and interpretation — what the writer implies, what a character's behaviour reveals.
• Vocabulary in context — a familiar word used in an unfamiliar sense.
• Author's purpose and tone — is this passage persuading, informing, or undercutting itself?
• Sentence and paragraph insertion — where does this removed sentence belong, which tests whether the child has followed the argument's structure rather than its content.

The single biggest gain here is a rule: never answer without returning to the text. See the four kinds of reading question and how to attack each one.

Mathematical Reasoning — 35 questions, 40 minutes

Under 70 seconds a question. The content is Year 5–6 curriculum; the difficulty is in the wording and the multi-step structure.

Typical shapes: rate and ratio problems, percentage change, area and volume, averages, number patterns, time and timetables, and probability. Very often a question contains a number you do not need — deciding what to ignore is part of the test.

Under this kind of clock, method efficiency matters as much as accuracy. Knowing to cancel before multiplying fractions, to work with percentages as fractions where it is faster, and to estimate before calculating, buys back minutes that go into the harder questions at the end.

Thinking Skills — 40 questions, 40 minutes

Exactly one minute per question, and no subject knowledge at all. This is the section that surprises people: it cannot be revised for in the usual sense, but it responds very well to being taught properly.

The question families:

• Logical deduction — clue sets with one consistent solution. Solved by elimination, not by guesswork. Worked example here.
• Must-be-true conclusions — the word must is doing all the work. Options that are merely plausible are wrong.
• Identifying assumptions — the unstated step an argument depends on.
• Reasoning flaws — circular arguments, confusing correlation with cause, attacking the person instead of the claim.
• Problem solving and spatial reasoning — nets, rotations, arrangements.

Because it is untaught, Thinking Skills is usually where a prepared candidate opens the widest gap over an unprepared one — and it is a full quarter of the mark.

Writing — one task, 30 minutes

One assigned topic, 30 minutes, open response. The genre is not fixed in advance: it may ask for a persuasive piece, a narrative, or something more reflective, so a child who has only rehearsed one form is exposed.

What markers are looking for is fairly stable across genres:

• A clear structure that is visible from the first sentence — not a story that finds its shape halfway through.
• Sentence variety. A page of same-length sentences reads as flat however correct it is.
• Precise vocabulary used naturally, rather than long words inserted to impress.
• Control of the basics under time pressure: punctuation, tense, agreement.

The practical habit that lifts marks fastest is spending the first four or five minutes planning rather than writing, and reserving the last two to re-read. Most children do neither, which is why this section is such good value to prepare.

How the Selective test differs from the OC test

If your child sat the Opportunity Class test in Year 4, the Selective test will feel familiar in shape but harder in three specific ways: there is a Writing section that did not exist before, Thinking Skills grows from 30 questions to 40, and the Reading passages step up considerably in difficulty. The clock stays just as tight.

The Department of Education publishes free official practice tests in the real test interface. They are the best starting point: NSW Department of Education — selective high school practice tests.