The selective high school placement test

The Selective High School Placement Test will be conducted on the morning of:

Thursday 15 March 2012.

It will be administered statewide in designated test centres, usually established in government high schools. All applicants in NSW at the time are required to sit for the test, unless there are extenuating circumstances. Candidates must be allocated to a test centre to sit the test.

The test is conducted only on this day and only in designated test centres in NSW.

Parents will receive advice of the test centre their child is to attend by 1 March 2012. 

A test information bulletin accompanies this advice (PDF 91kB).

View test centre allocation by primary school: Test centres

The Selective High School Placement Test measures ability and is set to discriminate at a very high level. It is very rare for even the highest scoring candidates to score full marks on all components of the Selective High School Placement Test.

Selective high school entry does not depend entirely on a student's performance in the Selective High School Placement Test as school assessment scores in English and mathematics are provided by the primary schools

Students who miss the test through illness or other unavoidable mishap may be considered through the illness/misadventure process. Students unable to take the test because they are interstate or overseas at the time should contact the Unit to determine whether they should apply to be considered under the illness/misadventure or the interstate/overseas procedures.

The Selective High School Placement Test is written by the Australian Council for Educational Research. It is a secure test and papers are unavailable for scrutiny before or after the test session. The test does not contain any questions used in previous tests. Students' final scores include a school-based assessment component.

School assessment scores

The school assessment scores will be moderated according to the performance of the candidates from your child's primary school in the reading, writing and mathematics tests. Moderating the school assessment scores makes them comparable statewide and gives school assessment scores and test scores in English and mathematics equal weighting.

Test centre

All candidates will be advised of their designated test centre.

Parents will be required to make appropriate transport arrangements.

Note: Parents must not remain on the school premises during the test unless special permission has been granted for student welfare reasons.

If you have not been advised by Tuesday 3 March 2011 about the test centre your child has been allocated to, contact the Unit.

A full listing of the test centres will also be available from this website.

All candidates from the same primary school are usually sent to the same test centre.

Test answer sheets will be identified by numbers and not by name to ensure anonymity in the marking process.

If you do not meet the criteria for entry you should not assume that your application has been approved because your child has been assigned to a test centre.

Test components

There are four tests. Three of the tests consist of multiple-choice questions with answers recorded on computer-marked answer sheets. These three tests are reading, mathematics and general ability and each lasts at least 40 minutes.

The fourth is a writing test. A stimulus may be an image, a statement or a question to which students are to respond in writing. Students have 20 minutes to complete this test.

The writing which is most likely to gain the highest marks will have a combination of the following:

• A title which sums up in a word or short phrase what the whole piece of writing is about
• Interesting and original or distinctive ideas, stories, descriptions, arguments, depending on the type of writing
• Language which is fluent and precise and uses interesting and more complex sentence constructions and vocabulary.
• A complete structure so that there is a progression through stages leading to a conclusion.

It is expected that students will produce writing that is their own original work in response to the stimulus in the test. Marks will not be awarded for writing that does not specifically address the stimulus. Marks will also not be awarded where the writing of students is discovered to have elements in common with writing of other students or published works. Selection committees have the discretion to deduct marks if they believe students have produced work memorised beforehand and adapted to respond to the stimulus.

Students must be careful not to look at the work of others during the test. Students found to be cheating risk disqualification from the test.

Applicants may request special test provisions because of disability, medical condition or behaviour disorder. Requests for special test provisions should be made by the student's parents or school's principal in the application.

Applications for special test provisions will be assessed individually.

While the fact that one student has previously been granted special test provision before does not necessarily mean that another student will be granted the same provision, in the past students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Asperger's Syndrome have been seated at the front of the test centre; large print papers have been arranged for students with vision impairments; and FM transmitters have been arranged for students with hearing impairments. Some requests such as extra time to complete the test are not usually granted although these requests are also considered individually.

The applicant and the student's current government primary school principal will be advised in writing whether or not the special test provisions can be granted.

Where special test provisions cannot be granted, applicants may lodge an illness/misadventure claim. The selection committee has the discretion to consider the student on alternative evidence of academic merit such as moderated school assessment scores.

It is important that any special test provision must maintain the academic rigour of the exam and must not confer any unfair advantage to the student.

These publications assist applicants for Year 7 entry to selective high schools to become more familiar with the Selective High School Placement Test.

Some of the items have not been included for copyright reasons. Items that assess reading will be available as copyright permission is obtained.

In the actual Selective High School Placement Test there are 45 questions in reading, 40 in mathematics and 60 in general ability.

Sample answer sheet

In the multiple-choice sections of the test (Reading, Mathematics and General ability) the students must show their answers on answer pages that will be marked by computer.

The answer pages are specific to each year's test. The "bubbles" to be coloured in are grouped according to the pages from the question booklet. This is intended to assist students to avoid answering in the wrong place.

Students are encouraged to view the answer pages so that they are familiar with the way they are required to show their answers in the test.

View sample answer pages. (PDF.50kB)

It is important to note that selection committees and appeals panels will not accept students' performance in the sample or past papers as evidence of academic merit for the purposes of entry into a selective high school in any future year.

Sample test papers

Reading 1	Mathematics 1	General ability 1
Reading 2	Mathematics 2	General ability 2
Reading 3	Mathematics 3	General ability 3
Not available	Mathematics 4	General ability 4