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Elizabeth Griffin
My daughters tutor Alana has helped her a lot with not only Maths and English but also study skills, essay writing and has boosted her confidence and positive attitude to learning.
Better Tuition Academy
Selective School Test Preparation on
Sydney's Northern Beaches & North Shore
Year 6 students applying for Year 7 entry
Preparing for the selective test
The selective high school placement test is sat in Year 6 for a place in Year 7. It is one sitting made up of four components, and three of the four do not test the Year 6 syllabus at all - which is why a strong school report is not, on its own, preparation.
BTA tutors work through all four components one-on-one, with most of the time going where it moves the mark rather than where a student is already comfortable. Lessons run at any of our academies, online, or at home.
For what the test itself contains, read the selective school test.
How BTA prepares students for it
All four components, weighted properly
Families tend to prepare for the component they already understand. A tutor starts by finding which of the four is actually costing marks, and spends the time there.
Pace as a skill in itself
Thinking Skills gives 40 questions in 40 minutes. Able students lose marks to the clock rather than to the questions, so working under timed conditions is part of the preparation, not an afterthought.
One task, thirty minutes
The writing component is a single extended response. We practise planning fast and finishing, because an unfinished piece is marked as what is on the page.
Free to read
Our guides to the selective test
Written by BTA’s tutors, free, and no sign-up.
The selective school test
What the placement test contains, what each of the four components measures, and how to prepare a Year 6 student for it.
Reading
30 questions in 40 minutes, and why switching between text types is the real difficulty.
Mathematical Reasoning
35 questions in 40 minutes, and why strong maths students still find it hard.
Thinking Skills
40 questions in 40 minutes, assuming no content knowledge - the component practice moves most.
Writing
One extended response in 30 minutes: planning, structure and finishing.
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Common questions
What families ask about the selective test
Most families we work with start in Year 5 or early Year 6. Three of the four components are unlike anything in the classroom, so the time is better spent getting familiar with them steadily than compressed into the final term.
No, and we would be wary of anyone who did. Places are allocated on a combined score against every other applicant in the state. What tutoring can do is make sure a student is not losing marks to an unfamiliar format or to the clock.
Preparation is charged at our ordinary one-on-one rates, starting at $95 an hour, with no enrolment or admin fees and no lock-in contract. Every rate is on the pricing page, and packages save up to 5% against pay-as-you-go. The 50-hour package requires 1-hour (60-minute) lessons, so it isn't available for primary students, whose lessons are 45 minutes.
Yes, and at the same rate. Lessons run at any of our eight academies across Belrose, Brookvale, Forestville, Mona Vale and Gordon, online, or at home, and you can switch format from one week to the next.
The first session is an informal assessment rather than a lesson. A tutor works out where the marks are actually going, and the plan follows from that instead of from a fixed course every student is put through.
Everything else is on our frequently asked questions page.
Why we publish
We give a lot of it away
Our tutors write for their own lessons: a breakdown of a set text, a maths paper pitched at one year group, the explanation that finally landed with a student on a Tuesday afternoon. Rather than leave that in a folder at one academy, we publish it.
The English half is free and has been for years. Around 15,000 students a year use those guides, most of them sitting the HSC, and you do not have to be a BTA student to open one. No account, no email address, no payment.
It is not a sideline either. These are the same pages our tutors build lessons from, which is why they are specific about a text or a module rather than general advice about how to study.
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