NSW Opportunity Class Placement Test

OC test practice papers, and how much of one an evening fits

There is more free Opportunity Class practice about than most families get through, so the useful question is not where to find papers. It is how many questions tonight actually holds. Put in the minutes you have and this works it out at the pace the real sections run at, then names the chapters of our free OC test practice papers to take them from.

30 minutes buys about 26 questions of Mathematical Reasoning, at the real pace.

Set a timer for: 30 min
Pace per question: 1 min 9 s
Share of a real section: 74%

From our free Mathematical Reasoning book, that is:

1Working backwards26 of 30

Or start from one of these:

Question counts, section times and weightings are the Department’s, re-checked against their pages on 6 August 2026 and listed in full on what is actually on the Opportunity Class test. The seconds-per-question figures are our arithmetic on them: 79 questions over 110 minutes of working time. They describe the pace the test sets, not a pace we recommend for a nine-year-old at the kitchen table.

Where OC test practice papers come from

Five places, and the first two are better than the third. If you only do one thing, do the Department’s own online practice test: it is the only one that puts your child in front of the actual test software, with the countdown timer, and then shows them which questions they got wrong and lets them click back into each one.

Every source of Opportunity Class practice papers we are aware of, including the ones that beat ours. Scroll sideways on a narrow screen.
Source	What you get	Cost	Answers
NSW Department of Education, online	One computer-based practice test that simulates the real thing, countdown timer included. At the end it marks the paper and lets you click into any question to see the right answer.	Free	Yes, with review
NSW Department of Education, PDF	Three sample tests, each covering all three sections, each with an answer key and an explanation of the answers.	Free	Yes, with explanations
Our printable books	three complete books, one per section, 815 questions in total. Whole books, not sample chapters. No account and no email.	Free	Yes, worked, for every question
Coaching colleges, free samples	A sample paper or a short set of questions. Whether it asks for an email address first, and whether it leads into a paid course, varies by provider — check the one you are on.	Free, in exchange for contact details	Varies
Coaching colleges, paid papers	Larger banks of timed papers, sometimes marked, sometimes with a percentile against the other students who sat the same paper. A percentile needs a cohort all sitting one common paper, which is what the free sources above do not have.	Paid	Yes, usually marked

No prices in that table on purpose. Coaching fees move, and a price written here in August is a small lie by November. Whether something is free does not go stale in the same way.

Two numbers on OC practice papers that are easy to get wrong

Reading is 14 questions, not 33. The Department’s own pages say 14 questions asking 33 answers, because three of the questions have multiple parts. Pace a practice paper on 14 and you will tell your child they have nearly three minutes a question, which is true and useless. Pace it on 33 and you get about 73 seconds an answer, which is the number that means something.
110 minutes is working time, not the day. Forty plus forty plus thirty is the time the pen is moving. The Department’s example timetable runs from a 9:30 am arrival to a 12:35 pm dismissal, with a break after Reading and another after Mathematical Reasoning. A full mock at home needs the breaks in it or it is not a mock, it is an endurance test.

What our OC practice papers are not

Free printable OC test practice papers with answers are easy to promise and easy to overstate, so here is the short version of where ours fall short. It is the same list as on the hub page, because it has not changed.

They are not calibrated. Nobody has checked our questions against the real test’s difficulty, so we cannot tell you a score in our book means anything about a score in May.
No qualified NSW teacher has reviewed them for year-level fit. Every answer is re-derived by an independent solver and every logic puzzle is brute-forced to confirm one arrangement fits the clues, which is a different and smaller claim.
One format difference we know about: the real Mathematical Reasoning section gives five options per question and ours gives four, so a lucky guess is worth 25% in our book against 20% in the real thing. Thinking Skills is four in both.
They cannot give you a percentile, because a percentile needs a cohort all sitting one common paper and we do not have one. If you want to know where your child sits against other children, that is the thing a paid trial test is actually selling.

The Department states plainly that it does not recommend or endorse coaching for the placement test, and that there is no credible research showing coaching helps a child gain entry. We are not going to argue with that in order to move a free PDF.

The three books, in full

815 questions across the three sections, each with a plain-English explainer at the start of every chapter and a worked answer for every question. The builder above tells you which chapter to open; these are the books it is talking about.

Mathematical Reasoning

75 pages · 300 questions · answers & working for every one · 2.0 MB PDF

See 3 more pages inside

Open the Mathematical Reasoning PDF
2 · Explain it in plain words
Every chapter opens with the same five boxes: the idea in plain words, a worked example, the mistake it invites, something to remember it by, and one question to check yourself. If it cannot be said plainly, it is not understood yet.
Open the Mathematical Reasoning PDF
3 · Then practise it
Page after page on that one skill, four options each, with room beside every question for working. The same skill over and over, not a page of unrelated puzzles.
Open the Mathematical Reasoning PDF
4 · Check, and see why
Every answer has the working, not just a letter. That is what lets a parent who is not a teacher explain where it went wrong.

Working backwards · Number patterns · Fractions of an amount · Time · Money · Perimeter & area · Changing units · Order of operations · Sharing & remainders · Averages

Download Mathematical Reasoning PDF

Free, no account and no email · 10 chapters

Thinking Skills

81 pages · 300 questions · answers & working for every one · 2.0 MB PDF

See 3 more pages inside

Open the Thinking Skills PDF
2 · Explain it in plain words
Every chapter opens with the same five boxes: the idea in plain words, a worked example, the mistake it invites, something to remember it by, and one question to check yourself. If it cannot be said plainly, it is not understood yet.
Open the Thinking Skills PDF
3 · Then practise it
Page after page on that one skill, four options each, with room beside every question for working. The same skill over and over, not a page of unrelated puzzles.
Open the Thinking Skills PDF
4 · Check, and see why
Every answer has the working, not just a letter. That is what lets a parent who is not a teacher explain where it went wrong.

Putting things in order · Left, right and next to · Letter codes · Groups that overlap · The odd one out · Days of the week · Balancing scales · Ruling things out · Finding the rule · Counting positions

Download Thinking Skills PDF

Free, no account and no email · 10 chapters

Reading

60 pages · 215 questions · answers & working for every one · 0.8 MB PDF

See 3 more pages inside

Open the Reading PDF
2 · Explain it in plain words
Every chapter opens with the same five boxes: the idea in plain words, a worked example, the mistake it invites, something to remember it by, and one question to check yourself. If it cannot be said plainly, it is not understood yet.
Open the Reading PDF
3 · Then practise it
Page after page on that one skill, four options each, with room beside every question for working. The same skill over and over, not a page of unrelated puzzles.
Open the Reading PDF
4 · Check, and see why
Every answer has the working, not just a letter. That is what lets a parent who is not a teacher explain where it went wrong.

Finding facts · Words in context · What a word points back to · Putting events in order · Numbers in the text · Main idea · Fact or opinion · Cause and effect · Comparing two things · Reading a poem

28 original passages. Two of the ten chapters carry a weaker check and are marked in the book.

Download Reading PDF

Free, no account and no email · 10 chapters

Once the paper is marked

The questions your child got wrong are worth more than the ones they got right. Type those up and turn them into a revision deck with notes to quiz.
Then work out when to come back to them, so the correction sticks rather than fading by the weekend: forgetting curve calculator.
If your child is in Year 5 rather than Year 4, the Opportunity Class ship has sailed and the Selective test is the one ahead of you. Selective test practice in Year 5 works out which chapters of the Year 6 books are open already.

Sources

Opportunity class practice tests — the online simulator, the three PDF sample tests, the section table, and the coaching statement quoted above.
Get ready for the Opportunity Class Placement Test — the 33 answers behind 14 Reading questions, five options in Mathematical Reasoning and four in Thinking Skills, and the equipment rules.

Both re-checked 6 August 2026. QuizPaste is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by the NSW Department of Education. The test-format facts here are taken from Department web pages, © State of New South Wales (Department of Education), published under CC BY 4.0. That licence does not cover the Department’s sample tests, whose copyright is held by Cambridge University Press & Assessment, so none of that material is reproduced here. Every question in our books was written independently. How we license our content →

Section names and counts on this page: Reading 14/40 min, Mathematical Reasoning 35/40 min, Thinking Skills 30/30 min.