Online tutoring for Year 6: Selective preparation and high-school readiness

The Selective High School Placement Test

In New South Wales the Selective High School Placement Test is sat in Year 6 for entry to Year 7 at a selective high school. It has four sections — Reading, Mathematical Reasoning, Thinking Skills and Writing — and each is pitched above ordinary Year 6 work. The NSW Department of Education sets the test date and application period each year; please check its website for the current dates rather than relying on hearsay.

By Year 6 a prepared child should be past learning the question types and into timed practice, so our plan for the year runs in three phases:

1. Terms 1 and early 2 — close the gaps. The demo class and the first few lessons find the question types that still fail (often ratio-style number problems, inference across a whole passage, or the "which conclusion follows" logic questions) and teach them properly.
2. The run-up — timed sections. One section per lesson under the clock, from our free Selective practice papers and the Selective practice tests set in the portal, each marked with the working so the pattern of errors is visible.
3. Writing every fortnight. The Writing section is a single piece under time. Your child plans and writes on the shared whiteboard while the teacher watches, then marks it on screen: structure, then sentences, then accuracy.

The Selective school preparation page describes the sections in detail; the maths guide and reading and writing guide have worked examples. Families outside NSW, or not sitting the test, use the same year for the readiness work below.

Year 6 maths: finishing primary properly

The Australian Curriculum's final primary year ties up number work and opens the door to algebra. The topics that matter most for Year 7:

• Integers. Negative numbers in context — temperature, money owed, lifts below ground — and on a number line. Year 7 will add and subtract them; Year 6 has to make them real.
• Order of operations. Brackets first, then multiplication and division, then addition and subtraction. Every algebraic mistake in Year 8 traces back to this if it is shaky.
• Prime, composite and square numbers, and factor work that feeds later fraction and algebra skills.
• Fractions, decimals and percentages together. Adding and subtracting fractions with related denominators; multiplying and dividing decimals by whole numbers; finding simple percentages of an amount, including discounts; and moving freely between the three forms.
• The Cartesian plane. All four quadrants, with negative coordinates — the first time maths is drawn rather than written.
• Angles. Angles on a straight line, angles at a point and vertically opposite angles, with reasons — the first taste of geometric argument.
• Measurement and data. Converting between metric units using the decimal system; timetables and elapsed time; side-by-side column graphs; reading data in the media critically; probability written as a fraction, decimal or percentage, and what you would expect to happen over many trials.

Year 6 English: from reading to analysing

Year 6 reading asks the child to notice how a text works, not just what it says: the author's purpose, the point of view, the techniques (repetition, imagery, rhetorical questions, emotive words) and whether an argument is fair. Writing grows in register — a formal letter, a report, a persuasive speech, a narrative with a controlled structure — and in editing: cohesion between paragraphs, varied sentence openings, punctuation that handles dialogue and complex sentences. Spelling and vocabulary work turns to Greek and Latin roots and to the precise word rather than the near-enough one. For a child sitting the Selective test, the same skills are the Reading and Writing sections; for every child, they are what Year 7 English expects on day one.

Getting ready for high school

Year 7 brings several teachers, a timetable, homework from every subject, and a maths class that moves on whether or not last week's idea landed. The children who struggle in Year 7 are rarely the ones who lacked ability in Year 6; they are the ones who arrived with one or two primary gaps that Year 7 content immediately sits on. The second half of Year 6 with Mathkari is therefore an audit: the teacher checks the whole of primary number — tables, written methods, fractions, decimals, percentages, order of operations — and reading and writing stamina, and repairs anything that is not secure. Our Year 7 page describes what is waiting on the other side.

What a Year 6 one-to-one teacher watches for

The first month

The demo class is an assessment lesson: number and fraction questions from Years 5 and 6, a worded problem, a short passage with inference questions and a paragraph of writing — with a few reasoning questions added for a Selective family. The teacher's written summary and suggested plan arrive on WhatsApp the same day. Classes are then weekly or twice-weekly at a fixed time in your own time zone, with a WhatsApp reminder before each one. Homework is set in the parent portal with a due date and comes back marked; for Selective families, a timed section is added to the portal most weeks from the second month. A message after each class tells you what was covered and what to look out for.

Neighbouring years: Year 5 · Year 7. Subjects: maths · English. Free papers: all free practice papers. Index: online tutoring.

Questions parents ask