QUESTIONS

It depends on the school, and it is the first thing to find out. Of the eighteen Perth scholarship schools we track, ten set a paper from Academic Assessment Services (AAS), one (St George’s) uses EduTest, one (Trinity) writes its own, and none names ACER. The Perth dates table lists the provider for each school. Confirm it on the school’s own scholarship page before you buy anything from anyone.

No. AAS, ACER and EduTest each design their own paper: different sections, different question styles, different timing. Almost all the prep sold in Australia is written for ACER or EduTest, because those dominate the eastern states. Perth is an AAS city. A WA family buying the book on the shelf is, more often than not, preparing for an exam their child will never sit — and practising the wrong pace and question shapes is not harmless.

Four sections: Reasoning and Problem Solving (the largest, around sixty questions, blending verbal, figural and numerical reasoning in one section), Reading Comprehension, Mathematics and Written Expression. Each is separately timed. The AAS explainer takes each section in turn and says what it is really testing.

We do not publish the minutes, on purpose. They are set out in the candidate information your school sends before the day, they can differ between year levels, and they can change. Read the school’s letter and believe it over any website, including ours. What we can tell you is the shape: Reasoning and Problem Solving is the longest, and pace is where most marks are lost.

No. AAS, ACER and EduTest do not release past papers. Every piece of practice material on the market — including the providers’ own practice tests, every bookshop title, and ours — is “style” material written to the published shape of the paper. If something is being sold as a real past paper, it is not one.

No. R2 Education is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by Academic Assessment Services, ACER or EduTest. We use their names only to say which provider’s paper a school sets. Our material is AAS-style and EduTest-style practice written independently in WA; it is not any provider’s paper and it contains none of their questions.

AAS does not run a single national test date — each school sets its own. In Perth the sittings cluster across roughly a fortnight, and most happen in February of the year before entry, with applications opening across October and November (every 2028-entry opening date published so far is a November one). The dates table tracks each school; the school’s own page is always the authority.

No, and it is worth checking before you buy any preparation. Some well-known schools offer no entrance scholarship at all. John XXIII College, for example, runs a need-based Foundation Bursary rather than an academic scholarship: its own page says bursaries are made strictly on the basis of financial need, so there is no exam to prepare for. If a school you are looking at is not in our dates table, its admissions page will say whether a scholarship exists, and which provider sets the paper if it does.

Yes, and many families do. Because each school runs its own sitting, that means separate registrations, separate fees and separate exam mornings, often in the same fortnight. If they are all AAS schools the preparation carries over completely — it is the same format each time — but the stamina does not, so plan the fortnight as a whole.

October, if you can. A term of two or three short sessions a week beats a summer holiday of daily cramming, and the child comes out of it liking themselves. Starting in January still works as a sprint. Starting the week before does not do much except raise the temperature at home. Scholarship season is the opposite end of the year from NAPLAN and OLNA, so the two never collide.

No, and it does not need to. They are different tests at different times of year for different purposes. A Year 6 family can prepare for a February scholarship sitting and still have the autumn for Year 7 NAPLAN. The NAPLAN and OLNA Trainers are separate products on the shelf.

The official practice tests are worth doing, and we say so. But they give instant correct-or-incorrect feedback only. A tick tells a child what happened, not why, or what to do next time. Every question in our AAS-style packs carries a full worked explanation written by a teacher: the rule and how to spot it fast, the setup and the trap, the line in the passage the answer rests on.

A practising Western Australian high school maths teacher — the same person who built the OLNA and NAPLAN Trainers. Every item and every explanation is written here, from scratch, to the published shape of the paper.

Yes, a smaller, separate EduTest-style pack for the one Perth school (St George’s) that sets it. We keep it apart from the AAS-style work because the two papers are different enough that mixing them builds the wrong reflexes. The EduTest page explains how to prepare for both when a family is applying to St George’s alongside AAS schools.

Not just yet. The packs are written and the prices are being settled; they will be on the practice packs page in good time for a February sitting. Email hello@r2education.com.au and we will tell you the price and the day they open. That is the only email you will get.

No, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. Scholarships are few and the field is strong; most candidates do not win one. What preparation does is make sure the child who sits down is not meeting the format for the first time, is not losing marks to pace, and walks out knowing they did themselves justice. That is worth having whatever the letter says. No score in our packs predicts a result.

Yes: the Perth dates table and the AAS explainer. Both are there so a family knows which paper they are preparing for before they spend a dollar — with us or anyone else.