A 6-month OC study plan: November to May

Applications open in November and the test is in early May. That is 24 weeks — long enough to fix a weak section properly, and short enough that starting at Easter does not work. Here is how to spend it.

This plan assumes a child in Year 4 (or the end of Year 3) doing about three hours a week. It is built around the structure of the real test: three equally weighted sections, all multiple choice, on a computer, with no penalty for wrong answers.

The principle behind the plan

Every section of the OC test counts for 33.3%. Parents almost always prepare the sections in the order they feel comfortable teaching — maths first, then reading, then "we'll look at that thinking thing later". That is backwards. Thinking Skills is the section nobody has taught your child, the section most children lose the most marks on, and the section that improves fastest with a method. It goes first.

The second principle: accuracy before speed, then speed. A child who is taught to race from day one learns to guess quickly. A child who is taught the methods without a clock, then given the clock in month three, learns to be right quickly.

Month 1 — November: Thinking Skills, no clock

• Apply. Do the online application in the first fortnight and submit it (see how to apply). Then it is off your mind.
• Learn what the questions are. Logical deduction (seating, ordering, who-owns-what), "which conclusion must be true", assumptions, flaws in an argument, and pattern questions. One type per session; five or six questions each; no timer.
• Teach elimination, not hunting. The single most important habit: cross out what cannot be right, rather than searching for what is. See how logical deduction questions are actually solved.
• Weekly: 2 × 45 min on Thinking Skills, 2 × 20 min light maths (mental arithmetic, times tables to 12 fluent, fractions of amounts).

Month 2 — December: Reading, and keep Thinking Skills warm

• Reading is not comprehension. Most OC reading questions ask what a writer implies, what a word means in this passage, or why a detail is there. Children who read well still lose marks here because they answer from general knowledge instead of from the text. Practise pointing to the line that proves the answer, every time. See the four kinds of OC reading question.
• Read widely, not just passages. Non-fiction especially — reports, nature writing, short history — because that is what the test uses and it is what nine-year-olds read least.
• Holidays: keep it going lightly through the school holidays. Ten minutes of Thinking Skills a day beats a two-week gap followed by a cram.
• Weekly: 2 × 45 min reading, 1 × 30 min Thinking Skills, 1 × 20 min maths.

Month 3 — January: Mathematical Reasoning, and the clock arrives

• OC maths is Year 4 content asked in an unfamiliar way. Multi-step word problems, patterns and rules, time and elapsed time, perimeter and area, fractions compared and of amounts, simple reasoning about digits and remainders. The knowledge is usually there; the reading of the question is not.
• Start timing. From now on, every practice set in every section is done at the real pace: roughly 70 seconds a question in maths, 60 in Thinking Skills, and about three minutes a question in reading (the passage takes most of it). Short sets — ten questions — so the clock is not frightening.
• Introduce "answer everything". There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so a blank is the only way to be certain of scoring zero. Eliminate, choose, move on.
• Weekly: 2 × 45 min maths, 1 × 30 min Thinking Skills (timed), 1 × 30 min reading (timed).

Month 4 — February: mixed practice and the wrong-answer book

• Rotate all three sections every week from here. Nothing is "done".
• Start a wrong-answer book. Every incorrect answer gets copied in, with a sentence in the child's own words about why the right answer is right. This is the step families skip, and it is where most of the improvement lives. Re-do the book's questions a fortnight later.
• Applications close this month. If you have not submitted, do it now.
• Weekly: 3 × 40 min timed sets (one per section), 1 × 30 min going through the wrong-answer book together.

Month 5 — March: full sections, on a screen

• Do full-length sections at full time — the real test has 14 reading questions in 40 minutes, 35 maths in 40, 30 Thinking Skills in 30 — but not all three on the same day yet.
• Practise on a computer. The real test is on screen at a test centre. Children who have only practised on paper cannot annotate the passage the way they are used to and lose their place in a long section. The Department publishes free official practice tests in the real interface; use them now, not in the last week.
• Look at the pattern of errors, not the score. Rushing at the end of a section? Losing inference questions? A specific maths topic? Fix the pattern.

Month 6 — April: rehearsal, then taper

• Two full rehearsals — all three sections in one sitting with realistic breaks, on a computer, on a weekend morning. One in early April, one about ten days before the test.
• The last week: nothing new. Re-do the wrong-answer book, sleep, and talk through test-day logistics — where the centre is, what to bring, what happens if a question looks impossible (answer it, move on).
• No cramming the night before. It does not help a nine-year-old and it makes the morning worse.

The weekly shape, summarised

Where a teacher makes the difference

Parents can run this plan. Where it usually breaks down is the review step: a parent can see that an answer is wrong but not always explain why the right one is right in a way a nine-year-old can use next time — especially in Thinking Skills, where the "sensible" answer is often the wrong one by design. That explanation is the job.