Practise the Selective writing test for free.
The NSW Selective writing test is thirty minutes, typed, in a box that will not let them paste. So is this one.
that is the whole sign-up
No account and no email. Nobody marks it, and the piece is theirs to keep. Best on a laptop, where the keyboard is the one they would actually use.
Already a Bing’s Academy student? Open the room from your own page link instead, so all your writing stays in one place.
Try the writing screen
Get a question the way the room gives one, then type for thirty seconds to feel the screen. The real test gives thirty minutes, and so does the room. Choose one to start.
Paste is off in the writing box, as it is in the test. Nothing here is saved.
Choose one of ours
Each is written for the NSW Selective writing test as Cambridge Assessment sets it now.
I write these myself, John
Type one in, or paste one from a past paper. Paste works here; it is off once the writing starts.
Nothing here is saved. Close the page and it is gone.
That was the screen. The real test gives thirty minutes to plan and write, and so does the room.
Built to match the real exam, down to the toolbar.
The toolbar has exactly the buttons the NSW Selective writing test gives them, from bold and underline to bullet points, and no others. So the screen they practise on works the way the one on the day does.
The door at the end of our corridor had been painted shut for as long as I had been at Brookfield. Eleven coats of green, Mr Halloran said, one for every headmaster who found it easier to paint than to ask what was behind it.
Nobody minded. A door that does not open stops being a door after a while. It becomes a wall with a handle.
Then, in the last week of term, the handle turned.
Priya found it. She had been leaning against it while we waited for the bell, complaining about her brother, and she felt it give, slightly, the way a loose tooth gives. She stopped mid-sentence and said nothing else until we were outside.
We went back at lunch, which took more arguing than I am proud of. It opened about as far as a hand, and behind it was not a cupboard, which is what everyone had always assumed. It was a staircase. Narrow, dusty, going up.
I would like to say we were brave. What happened is that we stood at the bottom for a long time, listening to a building we had been inside every day for six years and never once heard properly. Then Priya said we should tell somebody, and I agreed far too quickly.
Mr Halloran came with a torch and a face I could not read. At the top was a small room with a window we had seen from the playground a thousand times and never wondered about. It was warm. There was a chair, a cup, and a row of names scratched into the paint of the sill.
Some of them were sixty years old. Two had the same surname. One had been scratched out and written again underneath, more carefully, as though the first attempt had not been good enough.
Mr Halloran did not tell us off. He handed Priya the torch and added our names to the end of the row. Then he stood there a moment longer than he needed to.
The caretaker came on Monday with a screwdriver and a fresh tin of green.
And that was the last time anyone opened that door.
The task is a story that has to end on a line they are given.
- The piece, as a PDF With the question, the date, the time used and the word count on it.
- 362 words, 28 of 30 minutes What happened, written down. No judgement attached to any of it.
- Set A and Set B The markers' own wording, so they can see what the step up consists of.
Why not a Word doc?
Four things a blank document misses.
A document gives them all the time they want and a red line under every misspelling.
A clock in the corner
Thirty minutes, counting down, where the real test puts it.
No paste, no copy
The piece gets composed, not assembled. That is the skill being tested.
No spellcheck to lean on
There is none on the day. Better to find out here.
A live word count
Whether they have written enough is the hardest thing to judge from inside the thirty minutes.
John 'Bing' Huang
Founder · Penrith Selective, then Girraween
Why doesn’t anyone mark it?
An AI mark is only as strict as whoever set it up, and a band that is confidently wrong is worse than no band. A mark on a practice piece also teaches a child to write for the mark.
What a child cannot get anywhere else is thirty minutes of composing with no way out, as often as they want. When a piece does need reading, a person should read it, sitting next to them.
Writing was the paper that moved.
We were really pleased with Leo’s tutor and now want to enrol his sister Mia into your tutoring program for the selective school test.
Leo is on waiting list B and would receive an offer in October. We’re really pleased with this result!
YAY TOP 10% in writing!
That’s awesome, hats off to Alisha
We tutored writing only. It came back Muhammed’s highest band, in the top 10%. He is now at Girraween High School.
Before they open the room.
Can they write more than one piece?
Yes. They can write as many pieces as they like, on any question, for free. Every piece stays on their page, so they can see how their writing changed from the first piece to the fifth.
How do they come back to their writing?
When they hand in, your child gets their own link. Save it or bookmark it. It opens their page, with every piece they wrote, on any device. A new device just asks for your child's first name. On the same browser, this page also takes them back. Without the link, a new device or a private window starts fresh.
What do Bing's Academy students get?
They get all of this, plus their own page where we set their work. They also get 1-on-1 lessons with an expert. The expert shows them what to work on next.
Is this the current format for selective?
Yes. The test is made by Cambridge Assessment. It changed at the end of 2025. The room matches the writing test as it is now, and we update it when the test changes. Many books and worksheets were made for the old test. Practising with them means practising for a test that is gone.
Where does the writing go? It stays on your child's own page. We never publish it, never show it to another family, and never use it for anything else. We keep it for twelve months, then delete it. The PDF you save at the end is yours to keep.
Let them feel the clock first.
Writing is one of four papers. The free practice test covers the other three