NSW Selective Schools Test: the complete parent's guide.

What's actually on the test

Four sections, each run and timed separately, with a break in between. No calculator is allowed in any of them.

Source: NSW Department of Education, placement test and practice test pages (accessed 8 July 2026).

That's roughly two and a half hours of testing in a day. Mathematical Reasoning and Thinking Skills are the two sections we publish practice papers for — 35 questions in 40 minutes and 40 questions in 40 minutes, matched to the real question counts and timing. Browse the Mathematical Reasoning papers, the Thinking Skills papers, or see the full catalogue.

Selective entry, by the numbers (2020–2025)

The Department doesn't publish a running table of applications versus places — the numbers exist, but they're buried in a chart inside the independent review of the disrupted 2025 test. Here they are, pulled into one table, for Year 7 Selective High School entry specifically (Opportunity Class, for Year 5 entry, runs as a separate and smaller cohort).

Source: Dr Michele Bruniges AM, Independent Review of the 2025 Opportunity Class and Selective High School Placement Testing, Appendix 3, Figure 1 (accessed 8 July 2026).

Applications climbed almost every year to a peak of 18,545 in 2024, then eased back in 2025. The number of places barely moved across the same period — 4,212 in 2020, within 35 of that figure ever since. Averaged across the six years, the review counts nearly four applications for every Year 7 place on offer. These are state-wide averages; individual schools vary a great deal, from a handful of places at some partially selective schools to several hundred at the largest fully selective ones.

Sat on a computer, since 2025

2025 was the first year the test moved from paper to screen, delivered on a platform built by testing company Janison. Students sit it at a test centre — usually a local public high school — on a computer the department provides; there's no software to install and no device to bring.

The rollout wasn't smooth. Large venues were disrupted on the first day of testing in May 2025, which led the NSW Government to commission an independent review from Dr Michele Bruniges AM. All 12 of her recommendations were accepted, and from 2026 the test runs at smaller, more local centres — capped at 300 students at a large school and 180 at a small one. The computer-based format itself isn't changing; the venues and the operational model are.

The computer-based selective test → walks through what the on-screen interface actually looks like — the timer, the flag button, the question grid — screen by screen.

Key dates

For Year 7 entry in 2027, the Department published this timeline:

Source: Selective high school placement timeline, Year 7 entry 2027 (accessed 8 July 2026).

The pattern repeats every year: applications open in early November, when your child is still in Year 5; they close in February, once your child is in Year 6; the test itself is sat in the first half of May; and results land in Term 3 — historically late August (the 2026-entry cohort had results released on 22 August 2025). Exact 2028-entry dates won't be published until closer to the time.

The full key-dates guide → tracks 2027 and 2028 entry dates as the Department confirms them.

Who gets extra consideration

Up to 20% of places at every selective high school and opportunity class are reserved for four equity groups, provided a student's result comes close enough to the general cut-off: 10% for low socio-educational advantage, 5% for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, 2.5% for rural and remote students, and 2.5% for students with disability. There's no separate application — the Department applies this Equity Placement Model automatically to every candidate's result.

From Year 7 2027 entry, there's a second change: places are split evenly between boys and girls before ranking within each group, addressing a gender gap that had reached 58% boys to 42% girls in coeducational selective schools (60/40 in opportunity classes). Single-sex schools — Sydney Girls High, North Sydney Boys High, and others — aren't affected, since they've only ever admitted one gender.

Source: NSW Department of Education, fair access and 2027 entry announcement (accessed 8 July 2026).

Past papers

The Department's entire free public supply is three official sample papers — that's it, full stop. Past papers for the NSW Selective Test → goes through what's in them, where they fall short once your child has worked through all three, and what realistic extra practice looks like — including our own papers, one free per subject.

Results and cut-offs

A raw score doesn't translate directly into an offer. Cut-offs move every year and every school, shaped by how many students applied and how they performed that year — a school's cut-off in 2024 tells you very little about what it will take in 2027. Results and cut-offs, explained → covers how scaling works and what recent cut-offs have looked like, school by school.

How to prepare — familiarisation, not coaching

The Department's own position is unambiguous: coaching isn't necessary. Its guidance for students is to look at some practice papers and get familiar with the format — not to be coached — and it states plainly that the test "isn't testing high school concepts," it's testing "ability, thinking and problem-solving."

Source: Get ready for the Selective High School Placement Test (accessed 8 July 2026).

We don't take a position on whether coaching helps. Reasonable parents land on different sides of that, and there's no independent research settling it either way. What we're confident of, regardless of where you land: a child who has already seen the four sections, the on-screen timer, the flag button, and the layout of the questions is calmer walking in than one meeting all of it for the first time on test day. That is the specific gap we built our practice papers to close: not more content, but practice in the format itself. Every paper is sat as an online test built to mirror the real interface, and the review screen shows the correct answer and an explanation for every question afterwards.