NSW placement · choosing a school
How selective school and opportunity class offers are decided
An offer depends on far more than a test result: the order you listed your schools, which school it is, whether a family ahead declines, the Equity Placement Model, and — from 2027 entry — an equal number of places for girls and boys at co-educational schools. This is why two children with identical performance bands can get different outcomes.
The performance report does not contain a score
The performance bands do not show the percentage of correct answers that your child achieved. Instead, the report shows how many other students performed within the same range.
The Performance report does not give individual test scores or placement ranks. Test scores or placement ranks are not available and cannot be provided.
NSW Department of Education — Outcomes
Each component places a child in one of four groups — the top 10%, the next 15%, the next 25%, and the lowest 50%. Half of everyone who sat the test is inside that last group. These are four very wide bands, and the report says which group, not where in it.
Two children in the same band can be a long way apart
Two children both showing “next 25%” for reading might sit at opposite ends of a group that runs from just below the top quarter down to the halfway mark, with a large part of the cohort in between — and both reports say exactly the same thing.
There is nothing to add up
Four bands are four ranges, and ranges cannot be totalled. Adding, averaging or ranking band letters produces a number, but not a true one.
What else decides an offer
- The order you listed your schools. Offers come from the highest choice your child qualifies for — never from a lower one as well.
- Which school. The Department states that the test performance needed to get an offer at each school is different: it depends on who applied there, how they did, and how many places the school has.
- Who declines. A reserve offer exists only because a family ahead said no.
- The Equity Placement Model. Up to 20% of places at every selective school and opportunity class are held for students facing educational disadvantage, and offered on test performance within that group.
- Gender parity. From 2027, co-educational selective schools and opportunity classes make an equal number of places available to girls and boys.
From the 2027 intake onwards, there will be an equal number of selective places made available for girls and boys at all coeducational selective and partially selective high schools, as well as opportunity classes in public primary schools.
If places for boys or girls are not filled at a selective high school or opportunity class, the available places will be offered to students from the opposite gender who qualify for placement based on their performance in the placement test.
NSW Department of Education — Fair access
If a child missed out
Selective schools run Year 8 to Year 12 entry every year, filling places left by students who leave. The timing differs from Year 7 entry and the number of vacancies varies enormously by school. There is no single transfer test: what a school sets is its own decision and it varies — some use Edutest, some use HAST, and some run their own paper. None of them is the Year 7 placement test. The only reliable source for which paper a school sets, and when, is that school. Start from the Department’s Years 8 to 12 applications page.