How many questions are in the Opportunity Class test?

79 across three sections: 14 Reading, 35 Mathematical Reasoning and 30 Thinking Skills. Total working time is 110 minutes plus breaks. The count of answers is higher than the count of questions — the 14 Reading questions ask for 33 answers, because some have multiple parts.

How is the test weighted?

All three sections are worth 33.3% each. Note that equal section weighting is not the same as every raw mark being worth the same: the sections ask for 33, 35 and 30 answers respectively, and the Department does not publish how raw marks are scaled to those equal weights. Treat the equal weighting as a statement about sections, not about individual questions.

Is it a computer test?

Yes. The Department states the Opportunity Class Placement Test is computer-based and every question is multiple choice, answered on screen. Practising on paper is still useful for the thinking, but do at least one run on a screen so the format is not new on the day.

How much time per question?

About 69 seconds per Mathematical Reasoning question and 60 seconds per Thinking Skills question. Reading is 2 minutes 51 seconds per question, but because the 14 questions ask for 33 answers, it works out to about 73 seconds per answer — and that has to cover reading the text too. These are averages derived from the official counts and timings, not a recommended per-question budget.

Does the Department provide free practice?

Yes, and you should use it. NSW DoE publishes free online practice tests that simulate the real test software, plus PDF practice tests and a Student Resource Hub. The Department also states plainly that it does not recommend or endorse paid coaching, and that there is no credible research showing coaching helps a child gain entry.

Is the practice book on this page free?

Yes — the whole book, not a sample. All three are: 300 questions each in Mathematical Reasoning and Thinking Skills, 215 in Reading, with worked answers for every one and a plain-English explainer at the start of each chapter. No account, no email, no watermark.

Do the practice books match the real test exactly?

No. They practise similar broad question styles, but they are independently written, they have not been calibrated against the real test, and they have not been reviewed by a qualified NSW teacher — so we cannot tell you the difficulty matches. There is also one concrete format difference: the real Mathematical Reasoning section gives five options per question and our book gives four, which makes a lucky guess worth 25% instead of 20%. We would rather leave it at four than invent a fifth wrong answer no child would ever pick, since a filler option teaches nothing. Thinking Skills is four options in both. Adding a genuine fifth distractor across all 300 maths questions is the next fix on the list. Reading is closer in shape, because the real Reading section is also four options.

Were these questions written by a teacher?

No, and we will not pretend otherwise. Every answer is re-derived independently by a solver before the book is built, and every logic puzzle is brute-forced to confirm the clues allow exactly one arrangement. But year-level appropriateness has not been checked by a qualified NSW teacher. Treat the book as extra practice, not as a substitute for the official materials.

NSW Opportunity Class Placement Test

What is actually on the Opportunity Class test

An Opportunity Class is a NSW public-school class for high-potential students in Years 5 and 6, and this is the placement test used to assess academic merit for entry — placement also depends on your school choices, available places and the Department’s equity placement rules. It is usually sat in Year 4: three sections, 79 questions, 110 minutes of working time, and the three sections are equally weighted. Every test-format figure below comes from the Department’s own pages, linked at the bottom — the practice books and the advice around them are ours.

Free printable practice books Official NSW practice tests →

The three sections

Official structure of the NSW Opportunity Class Placement Test. Scroll sideways on a narrow screen.
Section	Questions	Time	Weight	Average per numbered question
Reading	14	40 min	33.3%	2 min 51 s (~73 s per answer)
Mathematical Reasoning	35	40 min	33.3%	1 min 9 s
Thinking Skills	30	30 min	33.3%	1 min 0 s
Total	79	110 min	100%	—

Working time only. The Department’s example Opportunity Class timetable runs from a 9:30 am arrival to a 12:35 pm dismissal, with a 10-minute break after Reading and another after Mathematical Reasoning — so budget about three hours on site, not 110 minutes. Section percentages are the Department’s own rounded figures.

Reading

Comprehension across a range of text types — the Department lists non-fiction, fiction and poetry, read on screen. The 14 questions ask for 33 answers, because some contain multiple parts — a detail that is easy to miss when only the question count is quoted.

Mathematical Reasoning

Officially, it assesses applying your mathematical understanding or knowledge to new problems; it is not presented as an arithmetic-speed test. Five options per question, not four. No calculator and no ruler — but paper for working out is allowed.

Thinking Skills

Officially, critical thinking and problem solving, with no prior knowledge required. Four options per question. The published practice questions cover things like ordering, letter codes, overlapping groups, odd-one-out and elimination — which is what our book practises.

What the timings work out to

Divide the questions into the minutes and you get the average pace the test expects: about 69 seconds per Mathematical Reasoning question, 60 seconds per Thinking Skills question, and about 73 seconds per Reading answer (40 minutes for 33 answers). That is arithmetic on the official numbers above, not a claim about how any particular child performs.

It is worth knowing before you practise, because untimed practice and timed practice are different exercises. Both books below print the pace on the cover so you can choose which one you are doing.

On the day

The Test Admission Ticket is sent about two weeks before the test, in the application dashboard. It has to be printed and brought along — without it your child is not admitted.
School uniform, even when the test falls on a Saturday.
Two possible test days are set and you are not told which one is yours until the ticket arrives, so keep both free.
Staff take the students in; parents and carers then have to leave the grounds. If the test runs late, the new pick-up time comes by SMS.
If your child misses the test through illness or something unforeseeable, there is an illness/misadventure process with a short window to lodge it, and an approved request means a make-up test. “You forgot the test date” is listed as a reason that cannot be accepted.
From 2026 the placement tests are held only in NSW.

All of the above is from the Department’s placement test page, linked at the bottom. Check it for your own year’s key dates — we deliberately do not reprint dates here, because a stale date on a page like this is worse than no date at all.

Free printable practice — the whole book

No account, no email, no watermark, no sample chapter. Each book has a plain-English explainer at the start of every chapter (what the idea is, a common mistake to watch for, and something to remember it by), then the questions, then worked answers for all of them.

Mathematical Reasoning

75 pages · 300 questions · answers & working for every one · 1.9 MB PDF

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

Download Mathematical Reasoning PDF

Thinking Skills

80 pages · 300 questions · answers & working for every one · 1.9 MB PDF

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

Reading

60 pages · 215 questions · answers & working for every one · 0.7 MB PDF

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

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

Download Reading PDF

All three books now include Reading, which we had held back. Rather than write comprehension questions and hope a checker could grade them, every chapter uses a question type whose answer the passage settles — so the answer key is re-derived from the text before the book is printed. Where that proof is only structural (main idea, fact versus opinion) the chapter says so on its own page and asks you to read those ones with your child rather than just marking them.

Use the official free material first

The Department publishes free online practice tests that simulate the real test software — with the countdown timer, and with the right and wrong answers shown at the end — plus PDF practice tests and a Student Resource Hub. If you only do one thing, do those.

The Department also states, in its own words, that it does not recommend or endorse coaching for the placement test, that there is no credible research showing coaching helps a child gain entry, and that too much coaching can harm a child’s wellbeing. We are not going to tell you otherwise in order to sell you something.

What extra practice can honestly offer is volume and explanation: more questions than the official set contains, and a worked answer for every one so a parent who is not a maths teacher can still explain where it went wrong.

Once the book is done

A finished book is easy to put in a drawer. Two things on this site help with what comes after:

Type up the questions your child got wrong and turn them into a revision deck — notes to quiz.
Work out when to come back to them so they stick: forgetting curve calculator.

Questions parents ask

How many questions are in the Opportunity Class test?: 79 across three sections: 14 Reading, 35 Mathematical Reasoning and 30 Thinking Skills. Total working time is 110 minutes plus breaks. The count of answers is higher than the count of questions — the 14 Reading questions ask for 33 answers, because some have multiple parts.
How is the test weighted?: All three sections are worth 33.3% each. Note that equal section weighting is not the same as every raw mark being worth the same: the sections ask for 33, 35 and 30 answers respectively, and the Department does not publish how raw marks are scaled to those equal weights. Treat the equal weighting as a statement about sections, not about individual questions.
Is it a computer test?: Yes. The Department states the Opportunity Class Placement Test is computer-based and every question is multiple choice, answered on screen. Practising on paper is still useful for the thinking, but do at least one run on a screen so the format is not new on the day.
How much time per question?: About 69 seconds per Mathematical Reasoning question and 60 seconds per Thinking Skills question. Reading is 2 minutes 51 seconds per question, but because the 14 questions ask for 33 answers, it works out to about 73 seconds per answer — and that has to cover reading the text too. These are averages derived from the official counts and timings, not a recommended per-question budget.
Does the Department provide free practice?: Yes, and you should use it. NSW DoE publishes free online practice tests that simulate the real test software, plus PDF practice tests and a Student Resource Hub. The Department also states plainly that it does not recommend or endorse paid coaching, and that there is no credible research showing coaching helps a child gain entry.
Is the practice book on this page free?: Yes — the whole book, not a sample. All three are: 300 questions each in Mathematical Reasoning and Thinking Skills, 215 in Reading, with worked answers for every one and a plain-English explainer at the start of each chapter. No account, no email, no watermark.
Do the practice books match the real test exactly?: No. They practise similar broad question styles, but they are independently written, they have not been calibrated against the real test, and they have not been reviewed by a qualified NSW teacher — so we cannot tell you the difficulty matches. There is also one concrete format difference: the real Mathematical Reasoning section gives five options per question and our book gives four, which makes a lucky guess worth 25% instead of 20%. We would rather leave it at four than invent a fifth wrong answer no child would ever pick, since a filler option teaches nothing. Thinking Skills is four options in both. Adding a genuine fifth distractor across all 300 maths questions is the next fix on the list. Reading is closer in shape, because the real Reading section is also four options.
Were these questions written by a teacher?: No, and we will not pretend otherwise. Every answer is re-derived independently by a solver before the book is built, and every logic puzzle is brute-forced to confirm the clues allow exactly one arrangement. But year-level appropriateness has not been checked by a qualified NSW teacher. Treat the book as extra practice, not as a substitute for the official materials.

Sources

Section counts, timings and weights are taken from the NSW Department of Education, captured 3 August 2026:

QuizPaste is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by the NSW Department of Education. The test-structure facts on this page — question counts, timings, weightings, equipment rules — are taken from Department web pages, © State of New South Wales (Department of Education), published under CC BY 4.0. That licence expressly does not cover the Department’s sample tests and related materials, whose copyright is held by Cambridge University Press & Assessment — so none of that material is reproduced here. Every practice question and explanation in our books was written independently by QuizPaste. Answers are verified by solver; they have not been reviewed by a qualified teacher.