NSW Selective Test results & entry scores, explained.

When do the 2026 results come out?

Two different tests, two different families, and the department uses the exact same phrase for both: the Selective High School placement timeline and the Opportunity Class placement timeline both say only "placement outcome released: Term 3 2026" — an eight-week window, not a date. Here is what is confirmed, and what is a reasonable estimate.

One wrinkle worth knowing: the test date itself has moved later in the year — it sat in March as recently as 2022, and shifted into May from 2025 as part of the move to computer-based testing — yet the August release timing has held steady across that change. A later test hasn't obviously meant a later result.

It's also worth knowing why 2025 needed an independent review in the first place: the 2 May 2025 sitting was badly disrupted at three large Sydney venues, prompting Dr Michele Bruniges' Independent Review (July 2025). One of its recommendations — smaller, local test centres rather than a few giant metro venues — has already been adopted: testing is set to run at local public school settings from 2026.

How the score works

Four components, weighted equally

Under the department's current placement procedures, Reading, Mathematical Reasoning, Thinking Skills and Writing each count for exactly 25% of the placement score. No single strong section can carry a weak one — the four are scaled onto a common measure and combined evenly, not averaged from raw marks. If you're going on an older sibling's experience from several rounds back, it's worth checking the current weighting rather than assuming it hasn't moved.

Performance bands, not percentages

The Performance Report that comes with your outcome places your child in one of four bands per component — top 10%, next 15%, next 25%, or lowest 50% of that year's candidates. The department is explicit that "the performance bands do not show the percentage of correct answers your child achieved" — it's a statewide comparison, not a mark out of anything.

Reserve list: bands A to F

If the outcome isn't an outright offer, it may be a reserve band. Bands A through E are "likely" to receive an offer eventually — indicative timing runs from within about a month (Band A) out to around five months (Band E) — while Band F is "unlikely." Reserve movement continues until the end of Term 1 2027, the term your child would start Year 7; after that, any late vacancy runs through the separate Years 8–11 entry process instead. One detail that catches families out: declining an accepted offer to chase a reserve spot elsewhere is final — "if you choose to decline your offer, you cannot get it back again."

The Equity Placement Model — up to 20% of places

At every selective school and opportunity class, the first 80% of places go out purely on placement-test rank. The remaining 20% is reserved across four equity groups — students from low socio-educational-advantage backgrounds (10%), Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students (5%), rural and remote students (2.5%), and students with disability (2.5%) — provided their test performance sits within 10% of the general cut-off for that school. It's additive, not a lowered bar in isolation: any equity place left unfilled goes back to general applicants. In 2025, 369 students gained a selective place this way (UNSW Sydney, December 2025, citing the department's own fair access page).

The gender-balance rule, from 2027 entry

From 2027 intake, every selective and partially selective high school — and every opportunity class — will offer an equal number of places to boys and girls. Entry within each gender pool still runs strictly on test rank; nothing about the test or the scoring changes. The trigger was a widening imbalance: coeducational selective high schools sat at 58% boys / 42% girls and opportunity classes at 60% / 40% by 2025 (girls held 45% of Year 7 places in 2019, down to 41% by 2025), with the government citing feedback that girls were declining offers at schools they saw as boy-heavy. Applications for 2027 entry — the first round under this rule — opened 6 November 2025 and closed 20 February 2026, so every student sitting the May 2026 tests is in this first cohort (NSW Government, November 2025).

Are there official NSW selective school cut-off scores?

No — not anymore, and not as a published list. The department's own outcomes page is direct about it:

"There are no set minimum entry scores to receive an offer to a selective high school or opportunity class." — NSW Department of Education, Outcomes

The reasoning is that a school's effective minimum moves every year with how many students apply, how they perform, how many places exist, and how many offers get declined — so fixing a number in advance would be meaningless. What the department publishes instead is the relative Performance Report (the four bands above) and the reserve bands — never a raw mark, a maximum possible score, or a per-school minimum.

One point most guides omit: plenty of coaching and test-prep sites publish tables with specific numbers by school — a figure for James Ruse, one for a "Tier 2" school, one for a regional school, sometimes "out of 300." We searched for a department source behind any of those specific figures and found none. At best they are reconstructions from families comparing notes after the fact; at worst they are invented to look authoritative. And because the test format and scoring changed with the move to computer-based testing in 2025, even a genuine historical number from a few years back is not on the same scale as whatever your child receives in 2026. We will not publish a plausible-looking cut-off table we cannot stand behind.

What you can use:

• Your Performance Report band per component is a real, department-issued statewide comparison — top 10%, next 15%, next 25%, or lowest 50%.
• Your reserve band, if you get one, is the department's own estimate of timing and likelihood — not a guess from a third party.
• A school's real "cut-off" in any given year is, after the fact, simply the rank of the last student who accepted a place there. It only exists once the round closes, it moves every year with the numbers below, and the department has never published it as a league table.

How competitive is it?

With no per-school data published, the honest number to look at is statewide: how many students are chasing how many places, year on year.

Source: Dr Bruniges' Independent Review of the 2025 Opportunity Class and Selective High School Placement Testing (NSW Department of Education, July 2025), Appendix 3 — Figure 1 and Table 1.

Two things stand out. Selective High School places have barely moved — 4,200 to 4,250 for six years running, across a school count that only shifted once in that window (Richmond High School went partially selective in 2022, taking the total to 48) — while applications climbed from 14,539 in 2020 to 18,545 in 2024 before easing back to 17,559 in 2025, around 4.2 applicants per place. Opportunity Class places have been frozen at 1,840 since 2021 against 13,000 to 15,500 applications a year — 7.2 applicants per place in 2025. As the review itself puts it: "on average across 2020-2025, there were nearly 4 applications for every Year 7 SHS entry place, and nearly 8 applications for every Year 5 OC entry place."

What happens next

An offer, or a spot on the reserve list

Accepting your first offer doesn't automatically end things — you can hold it while staying on the reserve list for higher-preference schools until the "reserve decision date," at which point you're removed from every other list automatically. Reserve movement keeps running until the end of Term 1 2027; anything unresolved after that shifts to the Years 8–11 entry process for late vacancies. Weigh a decline carefully: once you decline an offer, it's gone for good.

If it's a no this time

An unsuccessful result this round isn't a verdict on selective education generally, and it doesn't carry over between programs. Opportunity Class and Selective High School are entirely separate tests with entirely separate applications, two years apart — a child who misses an OC place sat in Year 4 gets a completely independent shot at the Selective High School Placement Test in Year 6, with nothing about the earlier outcome following them into that round. It's a useful thing to keep in mind if you're not the one waiting on results this year, too: a younger sibling still coming up the same pipeline sits their own test, in their own year, under whatever the rules happen to be by then — the gender-balance change above is a good example of the rules moving between one sibling's round and the next.

Preparing for next year

Whether that's a reserve-list wait turning into a decline, a first attempt after this round, or a younger sibling's turn still ahead, our practice papers cover Mathematical Reasoning and Thinking Skills, one subject at a time, sat online in the same format as the real test, with a free paper in Mathematical Reasoning and in Thinking Skills to start with, no account required.