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Children in Year 7 now sit the exam in Year 8, expected in June 2027. ACER says there is no need to practise or revise; our advice is to learn the format and keep your child reading widely.
Checked by the SelectiveReady team on 12 October 2026 · Updated 3 November 2026 · How we check facts
Independent. Not affiliated with the Victorian Department of Education or ACER.
It depends on where your child is today. It's for children in Year 8 who haven't sat it before, and fee-paying international students can't apply. So a Year 6 child has plenty of time, and a Year 7 child has a summer to learn the format.
| In 2026, your child is in | When they sit the exam | What to do now |
|---|---|---|
| Year 6 | In Year 8, two years away | Nothing exam-specific. Read widely, talk about ideas and keep up schoolwork. |
| Year 7 | Expected in June 2027, for Year 9 entry in 2028 | Learn the format over the summer. Application dates are not published. |
| Year 8 | This year's exam was on 20 June 2026 | The exam is sat only in Year 8. A small number of places may come up in Years 10 and 11, managed by each school. |
Its advice is short, and it should take some pressure off: there's no extra content to learn. ACER runs the exam , and manages applications and offers for the Department. The table below turns its tips into what to do at home.
The content is no more than the Year 8 curriculum, so nothing needs learning ahead of school. ACER's own checklist asks families to know the format and the answer booklet, download the sample questions, and have valid ID ready.
| ACER says | At home |
|---|---|
| There is no need to practise or revise | Learn the format; skip the drilling |
| Skills grow over time, through a culture of learning, varied engaging material and talking freely about ideas | Read widely and talk about ideas |
| When stuck, make an informed guess and come back to it at the end if there is time | Practise moving on from a hard question |
| half the questions correct is not unusual | Don't worry if the real exam feels hard |
| ACER's tips for parents: a good night's sleep, no unnecessary pressure, and staying relaxed yourself | Keep the exam week calm and ordinary |
The exam is held in June each year. This plan is our suggestion, not ACER's: light, and built around the three sittings.
If your child is in Year 7 now, the plan starts around the end of this school year. Most of it is ordinary life, with the timed practice saved for the last few months.
Six months before
Keep it ordinary
Reading widely, schoolwork and talk at the dinner table. No extra content is needed.
Four months before
Read ACER's Prepare page together
Learn the three sittings, the answer booklet and the rules.
Three months before
Sit one Practice test under real times
Spend longer on the review than on the test, then pick one habit to fix.
Last six weeks
One timed sitting a week
Rotate the sittings below so each feels familiar. Try ACER's sample questions once.
Last two weeks
Check the venue and the ticket
The venue email comes two weeks before the exam, and the admission ticket about one week before the exam.
Exam week
Rest
Early nights, normal meals and no new practice.
One sitting at a time, at its real length, with no calculator. ACER doesn't publish how many questions each part has , so your child paces by the clock, not a count.
On the day there is a 20-minute break after the first sitting and a 5-minute break before Writing. At home, a check of the clock at halfway is enough.
For Writing, our suggestion is to split the time evenly between the 2 tasks, with a short plan for each. Watch for spending too long on the first task and rushing the second.
A printed ticket, photo ID and pens, checked together the night before. The venue is set by your child's home address, and it can't be changed, so plan the trip the day before too.
Bring a printed admission ticket (electronic versions aren't accepted)
Bring photo ID no more than 18 months old, with a clear photograph, such as a school student card, a student travel card, a passport or a photo signed and stamped by the school
Bring two blue or black pens
At the exam venue: no phones, smart watches, calculators, translation devices or dictionaries, headphones, recording devices of any kind, notebooks or extra paper
Our tips: keep the pick-up time loose, and agree in advance that not finishing is common.
Read these three with your child: a Mathematics, a Verbal Reasoning and a Reading question. They are our own, in the style of each part, not ACER's, and each one shows the answer and the working.
A rectangular garden bed is 6 m long and 4 m wide. A path 1 m wide runs around the outside of the bed, along all four sides. What is the area of the path?
Answer: B
Answer: B
Find the area of the bed and path together, then subtract the bed. Together they make a rectangle 8 m by 6 m, which is 48 m², and the bed is 24 m², so the path is 24 m². 20 m² comes from adding strips along the bed's sides (6 + 6 + 4 + 4) and forgetting the four 1 m corner squares.
SCISSORS is to CUT as BROOM is to ?
Answer: C
Answer: C
Say the link as a sentence: scissors are used to cut. A broom is used to sweep, so C fits the same sentence. A dustpan goes with a broom and a floor is where it is used, but neither is the action the tool does.
In the 1860s, news from Britain reached the Australian colonies by ship, and it was always old. A report of an election or a change in prices in London might take six weeks or more to arrive, by which time events had moved on. Merchants guessed, governments waited, and families learnt of births and deaths long after they had happened.
The telegraph offered a cure. A message tapped out as electrical pulses could travel along a wire almost instantly, and by 1870 an undersea cable was planned to link Java with the northern coast of Australia. The question was how to carry the signal from there to the cities of the south, across more than 3,000 kilometres of country that few colonists had crossed.
South Australia's Superintendent of Telegraphs, Charles Todd, argued that his colony should build the line, and in 1870 work began from both ends. The planners had underestimated almost everything. Wet-season floods in the north washed away tracks and spoilt supplies; in the dry centre, teams hauled water as well as wire. Wooden poles were attacked by termites, and many were later replaced with iron ones. A signal also weakened over long distances, so repeater stations had to be built along the route, each one staffed by operators who lived for months at a time far from any town.
In August 1872 the last gap in the line was closed, and soon a message could travel from Adelaide to London within a day rather than weeks. The change was hard to overstate. Australian traders could now follow wool and wheat prices in Britain from one day to the next; newspapers printed overseas news while it was still news.
Yet the line's greatest effect may have been one that its builders did not set out to achieve. Before 1872, each colony had kept its face turned towards London more than towards its neighbours. A single wire strung through the heart of the continent, with operators listening at lonely stations all along it, made the continent itself feel, perhaps for the first time, like one place.
What is the passage mainly about?
Answer: C
Answer: C
Find the idea that every paragraph supports. The passage moves from the problem (slow news), to building the line, to its effects. Only option C covers all of that. Options B and D are details from single paragraphs, and Charles Todd is mentioned only once.
More worked questions: selective entry maths sample questions, quantitative reasoning, reading, verbal reasoning and writing tasks.
For a full run under the real times, try our selective entry practice tests. Afterwards you'll see results by skill, so you know which part to spend the next few weeks on.
Ask these before you pay anyone, including us, and expect plain written answers. ACER says there is no need to practise or revise , so use these questions as your own checklist.
| Ask | Why it matters for this exam |
|---|---|
| Is it built for this exam's three sittings? | Mathematics and Quantitative Reasoning takes 60 minutes, Reading and Verbal Reasoning 55 minutes, and Writing 40 minutes |
| Does it practise answering in a booklet? | Multiple-choice answers are shaded in a supplied answer booklet. Online practice, ours included, can't copy that, so try a paper sitting too |
| Does every wrong answer come with an explanation your child can follow? | A score alone doesn't show what went wrong; the explanation does |
| Is writing feedback tied to what the writing test asks, and who marks it? | The writing test has 2 tasks and tests conveying ideas in precise language, with the ideas organised coherently |
| Does it promise a place or a score? | Walk away. Families get no access to the tests or individual scores, so ask what any promise is based on |
| What's the full price, for what period, and how do you cancel? | Get it in writing before your child starts |
| Can your child try it first, free? | Look at ACER's own sample questions first, before paying anyone |
ACER says there is no need to practise or revise. A tutor is a family choice; ACER says the skills grow over time, not through extra content. If you do use one, ask them to spend the time on the format and on going through mistakes.
Our view: a few months of light format practice in Year 8 is a reasonable amount. For a child in Year 7 now, that means the start of next school year. Earlier years are for reading and curiosity.
Practice test 1 marks every answer and shows results by skill: what your child already does well and the three skills to work on next.
Practise for the real test
Practice test 1 is free. Then packs from A$109 for 12 months, or A$9 a week, per exam.