The Selective High School Placement Test will be conducted on the morning of Thursday 19 March 2009. 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.
The test is conducted only on this day and only in designated test centres.
Parents will receive advice of the test centre their child is to attend by 5 March 2009.
A test information bulletin accompanies this advice (pdf 91kb).
The Selective High Schools 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, 5 March 2009 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 test is marked by trained markers using pre-determined criteria. The writing will be judged on the quality of the thinking about a topic, the organisation of ideas and the control of language demonstrated in developing the piece of writing.
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.
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