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Farrer Memorial Agricultural High: Selective Entry & Places

Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School is a fully academically selective boys agricultural high school in Tamworth, New England. It offers 110 Year 7 selective places, entered through the Selective High School Placement Test.

A boys' agricultural selective school near Tamworth since 1939, offering day and boarding places on a large Calala campus.

Boys only. Boarders draw from across rural and remote NSW.


Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School at a glance

TypeFully selective · agricultural
GenderBoys
SuburbTamworth, New England
Year 7 places110, 2027 entry per aggregated Department data (AcePath)
Entry routesYear 7 via the Selective High School Placement Test.Later-year boarding vacancies are handled by direct application to the school.
BoardingOffers both day and boarding places, drawing boarders from across rural and remote NSW.
Official websitewww.farrer.nsw.edu.au

How entry works

Year 7 entry to Farrer Memorial Agricultural High runs through the statewide NSW Selective High School Placement Test, sat in Year 6. There is no separate school exam and no catchment for selective places — you nominate him among your preferences, and offers are made from a single statewide placement score. The steps and deadlines are in our application walkthrough.

About one applicant in four receives a selective place across the state. A miss says very little about a capable child — with roughly four applicants for every place, the maths alone means most well-prepared children miss out, and are fine.

Later years: Later-year boarding vacancies are handled by direct application to the school.


The last-published entry score — read this honestly

The Department has never published a per-school minimum entry score for Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School. Boarding agricultural entry ran through a separate process, so Farrer was never listed in the CESE minimum-entry-score tables — there is no last-published figure to report.

So any "cut-off" quoted for it is an estimate, not an official figure — and under the current test, no official per-school cut-offs exist for any school at all.

Where these figures come from, why the Department stopped publishing them, and how to sanity-check any number you read: our cut-off scores guide.


Known for

  • A fully academically selective agricultural high school for boys (Years 7–12), which enrolled its first students in 1939.
  • Offers both day and boarding places on a large agricultural campus (around 191 hectares) at Calala, Tamworth.
  • One of the state's agricultural selective schools, with a focus on agriculture and rural studies.

Families near Tamworth

Other nearby areas: Calala, Gunnedah, Armidale, Moree.


Whichever schools end up on your application, it is one test, sat on a computer. The single advantage every family can control is screen familiarity — hours on the real on-screen format before the day. Our full-length selective practice papers run in a player built to mirror that screen, and the first paper in each subject is free, no card required.