What happens after receiving Opportunity Class placement outcomes?

The results for students who sat the Opportunity Class Placement Test for entry in 2023 will soon be released.

You may be a parent of a child who sat the test this year; waiting in anticipation to receive notification of your child’s placement outcome. Once you receive the long-awaited outcome, then what?

In this blog, we cover some of the questions you may have about the possible outcomes and what happens next.

What are Opportunity Classes?

For the parent who is reading this purely out of curiosity or as research for a child who would like to apply for an Opportunity Class placement, let’s take a step back.

Opportunity Classes (OC) are offered in government primary schools and cater to academically gifted students in Years 5 and 6 with high potential. These dedicated classes enable students to learn at a more advanced level with other like-minded and academically strong students. The teachers are trained to teach gifted students and use specialised teaching methods and content to challenge these students.

Over 12,000 applications are received each year for less than 2,000 placements in primary schools with opportunity classes across NSW. To see a list of the schools with opportunity classes in 2024, click here.

The placement process involves students sitting a placement test in Year 4 to attend the OC full-time in Years 5 and 6.

How is the OC entry score calculated?

Entry into OC is determined by two factors:

1. Students’ results in the OC Placement Test – English (reading comprehension), mathematical reasoning and thinking skills.
2. Students’ school’s assessment of their performance in English and mathematics in Year 4 and occasionally Year 3.

The calculated placement score is out of a total of 120, with the following breakdown:

Students are ranked in order of academic merit based on their performance in the placement test.

What score does my child need to be accepted in an Opportunity Class?

To give you an indication of the typical entry scores, please refer to our previous blog ‘2021 Opportunity Class (OC) Minimum Entry Scores’, which details the minimum entry score and rank for all primary schools offering OC placements.

How are parents notified of the outcome?

Parents are notified of their child’s outcome by email and can view the results in the OC application online dashboard.

You will not only be advised of the outcome but will also receive a Performance report that shows how your child performed in the placement test in comparison with other students who took the same test. For each test component, your child will be placed in one of the following bands:

• top 10% of candidates
• next 15% of candidates
• next 25% of candidates
• lowest 50% of candidates

Individual test scores and placement rank are not disclosed to parents.

Opportunity Class test outcomes

There are three possible outcomes for OC applicants:

1. Placement in one of the selected schools
2. Placement on a reserve list for one or more of the selected schools
3. Unsuccessful for one or more of the selected schools (this may appear as ‘Not applicable’ where your child would have qualified for a lower choice but has qualified for an offer to a higher choice)

What happens if my child receives a placement?

If your child receives an OC placement – Congratulations.

The next step is to accept or decline the offer in the application dashboard by the response date indicated. Please note that offers lapse if you don’t submit a response by the response date!

Also, if you accept an offer, you can decline it later. However, if you decline an offer, you can’t accept it later. So, don’t rush into making any decisions.

What happens if my child is placed on a reserve list?

For students placed on a reserve list, a time estimate for how long it might take to receive an offer is provided via the application dashboard.

If your child is on a reserve list for one or more schools, you may receive an offer after the initial outcome notification. This happens if your child’s position on the reserve list is reached before all vacancies for the relevant school are filled.

If your child accepts an offer but is on a reserve list for the school listed as their first choice and they then receive another offer for that school, you can choose to accept it. If you do, the original offer for the lower preference school is automatically declined.

What happens if my child doesn’t receive a placement?

Unfortunately, given the number of applicants versus the number of placements available, the most common outcome is an unsuccessful one.

If your child doesn’t make it into OC, this doesn’t disqualify them from entry into a Selective High School, if that is their goal. To help them achieve this goal, you may want to consider additional support through tutoring to start preparing early.

To set your child up for exam success, seeking help from tutors is recommended.

Tutors help students form a strategy for long-term study and for approaching the different types of questions. The best thing you can do for your child is to find someone who can teach them how to learn, how to become problem-solvers and enable them to think outside the box.

At Global Education Academy, we specialise in helping students meet their learning goals, including receiving placement into a Selective High School. To help your child prepare and discover their potential to cope with advanced courses and enter a Selective High School, book a FREE Selective Benchmark Assessment with us today. Offer ends 1 November 2022. You can also call us on 1300 001 432.