Guides · Selective Test
Selective Test preparation: a month-by-month plan for May 2027
Selective Test preparation works best when it starts from the date rather than from a worksheet. The next sitting is expected in the first week of May 2027 — for Year 7 entry in 2028 — and working back from there, the job changes shape as it approaches: diagnose early, build the weakest subject through summer, rehearse whole timed papers on screen at the end, then taper. Below is that plan month by month, what a realistic practice week actually looks like, per-subject advice, the mistakes that waste the most time, and a straight answer on how much practice is enough.
Step one, free
Measure before you plan
You cannot plan around a gap you have not measured, and nothing on this page is worth doing until you know which section is the weak one. Two ways to find out, both free and neither requiring a card:
- A full-length paper, in the real format. One complete paper, timed, sat in a player built to mirror the screen your child will actually use — auto-marked, with a worked explanation for every question afterwards. Try free selective practice questions →
- The Department's own free material. Three PDF sample tests with answer keys and worked explanations, plus free online practice tests on the same platform used on test day. Do these first — they are official, they cost nothing, and nobody should pay for practice before exhausting them. The Department's practice tests →
The Department's own page notes its PDF sample tests "are from older paper-based versions of the test. So they do not reflect the current test format" (accessed 1 August 2026). Useful for question styles; not for the screen.
Which test are you preparing for?
Worth settling first, because the years are genuinely confusing and search results mix them together. The test is sat in the year before entry. The cycle for Year 7 entry in 2027 has already been sat: that test ran on 1–2 May 2026, and the Department expects to release placement outcomes from 19 August 2026. If your child is preparing now, they are preparing for the next sitting — Year 7 entry in 2028, sat by students currently in Year 5.
The Department of Education has not published dates for that cycle. Checked against its application process page on 1 August 2026, only the 2027-entry dates appear; nothing for 2028 entry. Going by the rhythm of the last two cycles, applications should open around early November 2026 and the test should fall in the first half of May 2027 — but those are estimates, and we would rather say so than print a date that looks official. Our Selective Test dates guide tracks confirmed against expected as the Department updates.
Practically, this changes nothing about the plan. Counting back from an early-May sitting gives you the windows below; if the Department confirms a different week, shift the months and keep the sequence. The sequence is the part that matters.
The timeline, worked backwards from May 2027
A realistic plan for a child in Year 5 now. The same hour of practice is worth very different amounts depending on where in this table it is spent — which is the whole argument for planning from the date.
| Stage | Roughly when | The focus | What that looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9+ months out | ~Aug–Oct 2026 | Diagnose, don't drill | Sit one full paper in each subject — untimed, if that keeps it calm — and open the Department's free online practice tests so your child sees the real screen once. You are looking for two things: which section is weakest, and whether the interface itself throws them. Nothing needs fixing yet. Read the format through once so neither of you is guessing at what the test contains. |
| 6 months out | ~Nov 2026 | Build the weakest subject | Applications are expected to open around now, so the admin is behind you and the test still feels distant — the best conditions for unhurried work. Take the one or two sections the diagnostic exposed and build the underlying skill: mental arithmetic for Maths, reading stamina for Reading, sentence control for Writing. Two or three half-hour sessions a week is plenty. Depth over volume; you have the time to spend it well. |
| 3 months out | ~Feb 2027 | Whole papers, timed | Shift from skill-building to complete papers under real conditions. Pacing is a separate skill from knowing the content: 35 Mathematical Reasoning questions in 40 minutes is about 68 seconds each, and a child who has only ever done untimed worksheets learns that arithmetic the hard way on the day. Review every paper together afterwards — the mistakes are the lesson, the score is not. |
| 1 month out | ~Apr 2027 | Rehearse the day | Taper the volume and rehearse the experience instead: full-length papers on screen, at roughly the same time of day as the sitting, timer visible, phone in another room. Put the Writing task into at least two of these — it is the section families most often never rehearse against a clock. The aim is that test day feels like one more practice run rather than a first encounter. |
| The final week | ~Late Apr 2027 | Do less, deliberately | Stop adding new material. One short, light session every couple of days keeps the format warm; more than that raises anxiety without raising skill. Spend the attention on logistics instead — the allocated test centre, travel time, what to bring, an early night. A rested child sitting a familiar test is the best position you can actually engineer, and it is entirely within your control. |
What a practice week actually looks like
The stage that gets skipped in most preparation advice is the boring one: how many hours, how often, doing what. Here is an honest answer at three points in the plan. Every figure below is a ceiling as much as a target — if a week is going badly, doing less of it is a legitimate response.
Nine to six months out
2–3 sessions · 20–30 min each
Single-skill work, nothing full-length. A set of mental arithmetic drills. Twenty minutes of reading something harder than usual and talking about it. One writing prompt planned but not finished. The point at this range is regular contact with the material, not accumulation — a child who does twenty focused minutes three times a week is in better shape in February than one who did a three-hour block each Sunday and came to dread it.
Three months out
1 full timed paper + 2 short sessions
One complete, timed paper a week is enough at this stage, and the review afterwards matters as much as the sitting. Budget a session for going through it question by question — not to re-mark it, but to sort the errors into 'didn't know it', 'misread it' and 'ran out of time', because those three need completely different responses. The remaining session goes to whichever of those piles is biggest.
The final month
2 full papers a week, then taper
Two full-length papers a week is the practical ceiling before fatigue starts costing more than the practice returns. Rotate the subject so no section goes three weeks untouched, and sit at least one paper at the same hour the real test starts. Then wind down through the last week deliberately. Nobody has ever regretted arriving rested.
What does not belong in the week: three-hour weekend blocks, practice squeezed into the half-hour before dinner, or any session that ends with someone in tears. Preparation that costs a child their evenings for six months is a bad trade at any price, and the test is not important enough to justify it.
Preparing each subject
Four sections, four different skills, and since the 2025 sitting all four are weighted equally at 25% — so none of them can be traded away. Question counts and timings below are the Department's own, from its practice tests page (accessed 1 August 2026). For how the four combine into a placement score, see the scoring guide.
Mathematical Reasoning
35 questions · 40 minutes · no calculator
What it tests
Speed and accuracy under a clock, not advanced content. The Department is explicit that the test "will not need your child to know any new or special knowledge" — it draws on the primary curriculum your child has already met.
What to practise
Mental arithmetic fluency first, because it buys seconds on every single question. Then the discipline of skipping and returning rather than stalling: at roughly 68 seconds a question, one stubborn problem can quietly cost three easy marks further down. Keep scrap paper beside the screen and use it — working sums in your head to save time is a false economy.
Thinking Skills
40 questions · 40 minutes
What it tests
Reasoning that deliberately doesn't look like schoolwork: logic puzzles, argument analysis, spatial and pattern reasoning. It is the section parents can least help with directly, and the one children most often meet cold.
What to practise
Familiarity with the recurring question families is the whole of it. A child who has seen a dozen argument-flaw questions recognises the shape of the thirteenth and spends their sixty seconds on the reasoning instead of on working out what is being asked. That is not a secret technique — it is just not being surprised.
Reading
17 questions (38 answers) · 45 minutes
What it tests
Comprehension under time pressure, in formats that catch children out more than the passages do. Three of the seventeen questions have multiple parts — which is how seventeen questions produce thirty-eight answers — and some are cloze passages or texts to be matched across several tabs rather than plain multiple choice.
What to practise
Reading stamina and the habit of going back to the text before answering. Wide reading for pleasure, started early and never framed as test prep, does more for this section than any vocabulary worksheet. Closer to the test, practise the multi-part formats specifically so the layout is not the thing costing marks.
Writing
One typed task · 30 minutes · 25% of the score
What it tests
Whether your child can read a task, plan quickly, and produce something that does exactly what was asked — typed, not handwritten. Since the 2025 sitting it carries the same 25% weight as every other section, up from 15%.
What to practise
Range, mostly. The official sample prompts ask for everyday text types — an advice sheet, a report, a diary entry — not only narrative. Practise reading the task twice, planning for two minutes, and writing to the brief. And practise typing: a child who hunt-and-pecks spends their thinking time on the keyboard, which is the quietest avoidable loss in the whole test.
How much practice is actually enough
More practice is not automatically better, and we would rather say that plainly than imply you need an endless supply of papers. Preparation has gone far enough when three things are true: your child has shored up their weakest subject, has sat several full papers under real time pressure, and has grown comfortable with the on-screen format. Past that point, extra volume mostly buys reassurance — for the parent, usually — rather than readiness.
A useful test of whether you are there: can your child tell you, without looking, roughly how long they have per question in each section, and what they do when one of them is taking too long? If yes, the pacing work has landed. Can they open a paper and start answering without a minute of orientation? If yes, the format work has landed. Those two are most of what practice can honestly deliver.
The single most under-rated preparation is free, invisible, and nobody counts it as test prep: comfortable typing. The Writing response is typed under a 30-minute clock, and a child who hunt-and-pecks spends their thinking time locating keys. Ten minutes a few times a week, started early, is quiet bankable preparation — and unlike almost everything else on this page, it stays useful long after the test.
The mistakes that waste the most time
Starting with timed full papers
Throwing a child at a whole timed test before the underlying skills are there mostly teaches them that the test is stressful. That lesson sticks, and it is expensive to unteach. Build the skill first and add the clock in the last third of the plan.
Drilling the strong subject
It is more pleasant to practise what a child is already good at — the sessions go well and everyone feels productive. But with all four sections weighted equally, the marks that are still available are in the weakest one. Spend the time where the diagnostic said it hurts, even though it's the less enjoyable hour.
Ignoring the screen
Every sitting since 2025 has been computer-based. A child who has only ever practised on paper meets the countdown timer, the flag button and the click-through flow for the first time on test day, and spends their first minutes learning software instead of answering questions. The format should be old news.
Skipping Writing
Writing is 25% of the score, is the section most families never practise, and is the one where a child starting from a low base has the most room to move. Even a handful of timed prompts changes it from an unknown into a routine.
Treating volume as the metric
Papers completed is an easy number to count and a poor measure of anything. Two papers properly reviewed are worth more than six sat and filed. If the review is being skipped because there is another paper waiting, the plan has too many papers in it.
Reviewing only the score
A mark tells you almost nothing you can act on. What is actionable is the split: which errors were content gaps, which were misreadings, and which were simply running out of time. Those three problems have three different fixes, and only one of them is 'more practice'.
Peaking too early — or cramming
Both extremes cost the same thing. A frantic final fortnight raises anxiety without raising skill; a child who was drilled hard in November and has been coasting since has lost the sharpness. Steady contact, tapering at the end, is the shape that holds up.
What preparation can and can't do
This is the part most preparation pages leave out, so we will be direct about it. The Department of Education states on its own practice tests page that "there is no credible research that shows coaching helps a child gain entry", and that it does not recommend or endorse coaching (accessed 1 August 2026). We take that at face value and make no counter-claim — not about coaching, and not about our own papers. Nothing on this page will improve your child's odds of a placement, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something without evidence.
What preparation does provide is narrower and real: familiarity. A child who has sat whole timed papers on a screen like the one in front of them knows what 40 minutes feels like, knows what the flag button does, knows the shape of an argument-flaw question, and is not spending their first five minutes learning software. None of that is an advantage over other prepared children. It is simply the removal of avoidable surprises, which is a reasonable thing to want on a morning that already has enough of them.
And the arithmetic is worth saying out loud, ideally before the test rather than after. In 2025 there were 17,559 applications for 4,227 Year 7 places — about four children for every place, on figures from the independent review of the 2025 test that we have pulled into a year-by-year table. Most well-prepared, entirely capable children miss out, because there is no version of those numbers where they do not. An unsuccessful result is not recorded against your child, does not affect any future application, and does not mean the preparation was wasted or wrong. Selective schooling is one path among several, and a comprehensive high school with a child who is not exhausted is not a consolation prize.
Keep going
For the free material to build this plan around, see Selective Test past papers — the Department's official sample tests, organised, with an honest note on what they miss. For the test window, Selective Test dates. For how the four sections combine into a placement score, Selective Test scoring. For the screen your child will sit in front of, the computer-based Selective Test guide. And for the whole process end to end — eligibility, applications, offers, appeals — the NSW Selective Test guide.
Frequently asked
Questions about preparing for the Selective Test.
When should we start preparing for the Selective Test?
Most families begin in earnest around the November-to-February application window, when the test is roughly three months away and the summer holidays offer a clear block of time. Six to nine months out is a comfortable runway for light, regular work; earlier than that, preparation tends to lose its shape long before the test. What rarely helps anyone is a frantic month of cramming just before the sitting.
How do I prepare my child for the Selective Test at home?
Work backwards from the test date in four stages. Diagnose first, using the Department's free official practice tests and a full paper in each subject, to find the weakest section. Build that section with short regular sessions over the following months. Move to whole timed papers on screen about three months out, so pacing and the interface become routine. Then taper in the final fortnight. Review every paper together — sorting mistakes into content gaps, misreadings and timing failures is where the actual learning happens.
How much practice is enough for the Selective Test?
There is no magic number, and more is not automatically better. Preparation is far enough along when three things are true: your child has shored up their weakest subject, has sat several full papers under real time pressure, and is comfortable with the on-screen format. Once those hold, extra volume mostly buys reassurance rather than readiness — and we would rather say so than imply you need to keep buying papers.
Does coaching improve a child's chances in the Selective Test?
The NSW Department of Education states on its own practice tests page that 'there is no credible research that shows coaching helps a child gain entry', and says it does not recommend or endorse coaching. We take that at face value and make no counter-claim. What preparation genuinely provides is familiarity — with the question styles, the timing and the computer-based interface — so that fewer things are surprising on the day. That is the honest case for practising, and the only one we make.
How long should a Selective Test practice session be?
Twenty to thirty minutes for skill work, and the full section length once you move to timed papers — 40 minutes for Mathematical Reasoning or Thinking Skills, 45 for Reading, 30 for Writing. Two or three short sessions a week early on, rising to one full timed paper plus review a week from about three months out, and a ceiling of roughly two full papers a week in the final month. Beyond that, fatigue costs more than the practice returns.
Which section should we prepare first?
The weakest one, which is why the plan starts with a diagnostic rather than a worksheet. Since the 2025 sitting all four sections carry equal 25% weight, so no section can be traded off against another the way a heavily-weighted Mathematical Reasoning once allowed. In practice Writing is the most commonly under-prepared section, because it is the only one without a right answer to mark — worth checking whether it has quietly been skipped.
Can we prepare for the Selective Test in three months?
Yes, and plenty of families do — the November-to-February window is roughly three months and it is when most preparation actually happens. A three-month plan just has to be more disciplined about order: one week to diagnose, six or seven weeks on the weakest section, then whole timed papers on screen for the last month. What does not fit into three months is fixing everything at once, so pick the two sections that need it most and leave the others to routine practice.
Does my child need to practise on a computer?
Yes. Every sitting since 2025 has been delivered on computers at the test centre, so the countdown clock, the flag button, the question navigator and typing the writing response are all part of what is being tested, whether or not anyone intends them to be. The Department runs free online practice tests on the same platform used on test day — the closest free look at the real interface there is, and worth doing before anything else.
When is the next Selective Test?
The last confirmed sitting was 1–2 May 2026, for Year 7 entry in 2027, with placement outcomes expected from 19 August 2026. The Department of Education has not published dates for the following cycle — Year 7 entry in 2028 — as of 1 August 2026. Based on the last two cycles, expect applications to open around early November 2026 and the test in the first half of May 2027, but treat both as estimates until the Department confirms them.
What if my child does not get a place?
Most applicants do not, and it says very little about a capable child. In 2025 there were 17,559 applications for 4,227 Year 7 places — about four children for every place — so the arithmetic alone guarantees that most well-prepared children miss out. An unsuccessful result is not recorded against your child and does not affect any future application. It is worth saying this out loud to them before the test, not after.