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NSW Opportunity Class & Selective High School

Thinking Skills test practice: seven question patterns

Thinking Skills appears in both NSW placement tests. The Department describes it as critical thinking and problem solving, and states that no previous knowledge is required — which is what makes it awkward to prepare for in the usual way, because there is no set content to revise.

What you can look at in advance is the shape of the questions. Below are seven patterns that recur across the Department’s published practice questions, grouped by us, not by the Department, each with a worked example taken from our free books.

Free printable practice — 510 questions

Where it appears, and how tight the clock is

Opportunity Class test

30 questions · 30 minutes

Sat in Year 4. One third of the total marks. Four options per question. All three sections explained.

Selective High School test

40 questions · 40 minutes

Sat in Year 6. One quarter of the total marks. Four options per question. All four sections explained.

Both work out at exactly one minute a question, which is the shortest average of any multiple-choice section in either test. Dividing the published counts by the published times gives 60 seconds here against about 69 seconds for Mathematical Reasoning.

The seven question families

Read each question and have a go before opening the answer. The point is not whether your child gets it right — it is whether they recognise, in the first few seconds, which kind of question they are looking at.

These groupings are ours, not the Department’s. It does not publish a list of question types; these are the families that recur across its published practice questions, separated so each can be taught on its own.

Putting things in order

Ordering

A set of clues about who is ahead of whom, and one question about a position nobody stated directly. The clues never arrive in order — that is the work.

4 children ran a race. Kai finished ahead of Ava. Mila finished ahead of Finn. Kai finished ahead of Mila. Mila finished ahead of Ava. Finn finished last. Who finished first?
  • ( ) Mila
  • ( ) Finn
  • ( ) Ava
  • ( ) Kai
Show the answer — Putting things in orderHide the answer — Putting things in order
Kai — Put them in order from the clues: Kai then Mila then Ava then Finn. So first is Kai.From the QuizPaste Opportunity Class Thinking Skills book, chapter 1.

Letter codes

Substitution

One word is written in code and you code a second word the same way. A well-posed version of this question tells you the letters all move by the same amount — without that, one coded word does not pin the rule down.

In a code, every letter is moved the same number of places along the alphabet. XRA is written as BVE. Using the same code, how is TOP written?
  • ( ) PKL
  • ( ) XST
  • ( ) TOP
  • ( ) YTU
Show the answer — Letter codesHide the answer — Letter codes
XST — Each letter moves 4 places forward in the alphabet (XRA to BVE). Doing the same to TOP gives XST.From the QuizPaste Opportunity Class Thinking Skills book, chapter 3.

Groups that overlap

Overlap

Two or three groups with people in more than one of them. Anyone in two groups gets counted twice unless you take the overlap back off.

In a class of 29 students, 8 play soccer and 14 play netball. 4 play both. How many play at least one of the two sports?
  • ( ) 11
  • ( ) 18
  • ( ) 4
  • ( ) 22
Show the answer — Groups that overlapHide the answer — Groups that overlap
18 — At least one sport: 8 + 14 - 4 = 18 (the 4 who play both were counted twice).From the QuizPaste Opportunity Class Thinking Skills book, chapter 4.

Ruling things out

Deduction

Everyone owns exactly one thing and nobody shares. The clues tell you what people do NOT have, and the answer is whatever is left standing.

Between them, Ivy, Ella and Eli own exactly one bird, one cat and one dog. Each child owns a different pet. Ivy does not own the cat or the dog. Ella does not own the dog. What does Eli own?
  • ( ) dog
  • ( ) cat
  • ( ) cannot be decided
  • ( ) bird
Show the answer — Ruling things outHide the answer — Ruling things out
dog — Ivy cannot have the cat or the dog, so Ivy has the bird. Ella cannot have the dog, and the bird is taken, so Ella has the cat. That leaves the dog for Eli.From the QuizPaste Opportunity Class Thinking Skills book, chapter 8.

Finding the rule

Rule finding

A machine turns numbers into other numbers by the same two operations every time. Find the rule from the examples, then check it against every example before you use it.

A machine multiplies by the same whole number and then adds the same whole number, every time. 3 becomes 21; 2 becomes 17; 9 becomes 45. What does 8 become?
  • ( ) 45
  • ( ) 41
  • ( ) 32
  • ( ) 17
Show the answer — Finding the ruleHide the answer — Finding the rule
41 — Each number is multiplied by 4 then 9 is added. 8 x 4 = 32, + 9 = 41.From the QuizPaste Opportunity Class Thinking Skills book, chapter 9.

Days of the week

Cycles

Counting a long way forward or back through a seven-day cycle. Counting day by day is where children lose their place; dividing by 7 and using the remainder is the same answer with none of the risk.

Today is Saturday. What day will it be in 100 days?
  • ( ) Tuesday
  • ( ) Monday
  • ( ) Sunday
  • ( ) Saturday
Show the answer — Days of the weekHide the answer — Days of the week
Monday — 100 / 7 = 14 weeks and 2 days left over. 14 weeks lands on Saturday again, then 2 more days gives Monday.From the QuizPaste Opportunity Class Thinking Skills book, chapter 6.

Counting positions

Counting

A line of people and a question about how many are in front of or behind someone. The person named is either counted or not counted depending on the wording, which is where the arithmetic usually goes wrong.

24 children stand in a line. Nina is 5th from the front. How many children are behind Nina?
  • ( ) 5
  • ( ) 4
  • ( ) 20
  • ( ) 19
Show the answer — Counting positionsHide the answer — Counting positions
19 — Nina is in position 5, so 5 children (including Nina) are from the front up to Nina. That leaves 24 - 5 = 19 behind.From the QuizPaste Opportunity Class Thinking Skills book, chapter 10.

What the Department says about preparing

Before you spend a term on this, read what the people who run the test actually say about preparation. These are their words, not ours:

  • “It is important to know that coaching or tutoring for the placement test is not necessary.”
  • “The department does not recommend or endorse coaching for the placement test.”
  • “There is no credible research that shows coaching helps a child gain entry.”
  • “A child who is coached and gets in is likely to have got a place anyway.”
  • “Many students who get coaching don’t get a place, and too much coaching can harm their wellbeing.”

We are not going to argue with that in order to sell you something — and there is nothing to sell here anyway, since both books are free.

So what is this page for? Seeing the questions before the day, rather than for the first time under a one-minute clock. Whether that changes an outcome we do not know, and we are not going to claim it does. What we can say is that the examples above are real, every answer in the books is re-derived by an independent solver before printing, and looking at them costs nothing.

Quoted from the Department’s Opportunity Class practice tests page, linked in full at the bottom of this page.

Two free books, 510 questions

The whole book each time — no account, no email, no sample chapter. Every chapter is one of the families above: a plain-English explainer, then thirty questions, then worked answers for all of them.

Every answer in both books is re-derived by an independent solver before the book is printed, and a question that fails is never written to the file. Ordering puzzles get a second check on top: they are brute-forced and thrown out unless the clues allow exactly one arrangement, because a logic puzzle with two valid answers still prints one of them and looks perfectly fine on the page.

The rest of the test

Thinking Skills is one section of a longer test. The other sections have their own page here, with the official structure and their own free books:

Questions parents ask

What is the Thinking Skills section actually testing?
The Department describes it as critical thinking and problem solving, and states that no previous knowledge is required. That is the whole of what we can tell you from the source. It does not follow that the questions involve no reading, no numbers or no familiar contexts — only that no prescribed body of knowledge is assumed.
How many Thinking Skills questions are in each test?
30 in 30 minutes for the Opportunity Class test, and 40 in 40 minutes for the Selective High School test. Both work out at exactly one minute a question. Dividing the published counts by the published times, that is the shortest average of any multiple-choice section in either test — Mathematical Reasoning is about 69 seconds. Four options per question in both.
Can you actually get better at it, if it is not curriculum?
We do not know, and we are not going to claim it. What we can tell you is what the Department says: coaching or tutoring for the placement test is not necessary, it does not recommend or endorse coaching, and there is no credible research that shows coaching helps a child gain entry. What this page offers is narrower than a claim about outcomes — a look at the kinds of question involved, before the day, rather than for the first time under a one-minute clock.
Are these seven types the official list?
No, and it is important to be clear about that. The Department does not publish a taxonomy of question types. These seven are the families that recur across its published practice questions, grouped by us so they can be taught one at a time. Treat it as a useful map, not an official syllabus.
Is the practice free?
Yes, both books in full — 300 questions at Year 4 level and 210 at Year 6, with worked answers for every one. No account, no email, no watermark, no sample chapter.
Which book should my child use?
Year 4 sitting the Opportunity Class test: the first one. Year 6 sitting the Selective test: the second, which uses five and six item orderings, two-step codes and three overlapping groups instead of two. If you are between the two, start with the Year 4 book — the families are the same and the Year 6 book only makes each one bigger.
Were these written by a teacher?
No. Every ordering puzzle is brute-forced at build time and rejected unless the clues allow exactly one arrangement — a logic puzzle with two valid answers still prints one of them and looks fine, so that cannot be a spot check. But year-level appropriateness has not been reviewed by a qualified NSW teacher.

Sources

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, option counts, weightings — 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 — none of that material is reproduced here. The seven groupings, and every practice question shown above, are original to QuizPaste. Answers are verified by solver; they have not been reviewed by a qualified teacher.