WA ASET: the Gifted and Talented selection test and how to prepare

Western Australia runs one central selection process for Gifted and Talented programs at 24 government secondary schools, including Perth Modern School, the state's only fully selective academic school. There are three streams — academic, arts and languages — and every applicant, whatever the stream, sits the Academic Selective Entrance Test (ASET), a paper-based reasoning test. For Year 7 entry, students sit it in Year 6; there is also an ASET for Years 9, 10 and 11 entry. Families apply online to the Department once, in the year before testing, and regional students sit the test in their own education region.

The Department's ASET Handbook sets out four tests. Reading Comprehension: 35 multiple-choice questions in 35 minutes, on fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama, which may include diagrams, tables, charts or maps. Communicating Ideas in Writing: 25 minutes for a handwritten response to a prompt that may be an image, a piece of text or both, in any style. Quantitative Reasoning: 35 questions in 35 minutes using mathematical and scientific reasoning. Abstract Reasoning: 35 questions in 20 minutes on patterns and connections. Multiple-choice questions have four options, each is worth one point, and there is no penalty for guessing. The Handbook does not say how the four tests are combined, only that it is the overall score that counts.

ASET is deliberately unlike a school test. The Department says Quantitative Reasoning is very different to a test of school mathematics or science, Abstract Reasoning has 35 questions in 20 minutes — about 34 seconds each, by our arithmetic. The writing is scored by at least two markers on relevance to the prompt, freshness of ideas, style, organisation, voice and language. Spelling and punctuation have little impact if the writing is readable, but off-topic, memorised or copied work scores zero.

Preparation that matches the test looks like this: wide reading across all four text types, including some poetry and drama; reasoning puzzles that mix number with simple science ideas such as rates, patterns in data and cause and effect; short, brisk sessions of pattern questions to build speed; and handwritten responses to picture and text prompts in 25 minutes. Because guessing is not penalised, practise never leaving a multiple-choice answer blank, and keep sessions short and positive — a Year 6 student performs best when calm.