Selective Schools NSW: The Full List and Year 7 Places for 2027

NSW has 17 fully selective high schools, 27 partially selective high schools and 4 agricultural high schools that are also fully selective, according to the NSW Department of Education’s current list. The Department counts 4,338 Year 7 selective places for students starting high school in 2027, a total that, by our arithmetic, includes the 90 places at Aurora College, its online selective option.

That is more choice than most families realise, and it is spread unevenly. Some schools take 180 students a year, some take 30, some take only boys or only girls, and a handful sit within a short drive of Blacktown. This guide lays out the whole list as the Department publishes it, shows what the numbers mean, and points you to our detailed guides on the test, the dates and the results.

Everything here comes from Department of Education pages we checked on 10 October 2026. We do not publish entry cut-offs or school rankings, because the Department publishes neither.

Key Takeaways

• The Department lists 17 fully selective, 27 partially selective and 4 agricultural high schools for Year 7 entry, plus the online Aurora College for rural and remote students.
• Fully selective schools fill every place through the selective process. Partially selective schools run selective classes alongside local-area classes.
• Most selective schools are co-educational. Eight fully selective schools are single-sex: four for boys and four for girls.
• From the 2027 intake, co-educational selective schools offer equal numbers of places to girls and boys.
• Near Blacktown, nine schools on the list offer 750 Year 7 places between them, including two partially selective schools in Blacktown itself.
• Entry runs through one test with four equally weighted sections; our Thinking Skills guide covers the section that surprises most students.
• Applications for 2028 entry had not been announced as of 10 October 2026. The last cycle opened in November and closed in February.

Contents

• How Many Selective Schools Are There in NSW?
• What Is the Difference Between Fully and Partially Selective Schools?
• Which Selective Schools Are Co-Ed, Boys or Girls?
• List of Selective High Schools in NSW for 2027 Entry
• How to Read the DoE Selective Schools List
• Which Selective Schools Are Near Blacktown?
• What Is in the Selective High School Placement Test?
• When Do Selective School Applications Open for 2028 Entry?
• How Are Selective School Offers Decided?
• What Happens After Selective Results Come Out?
• Getting Ready for the Selective Test in Blacktown
• The Bottom Line
• Frequently Asked Questions

How Many Selective Schools Are There in NSW?

The Department of Education describes four types of selective high school: fully selective, partially selective, agricultural and Aurora College. Aurora College runs online selective classes for rural and remote students, so this guide focuses on the other three. Fully selective schools hold well over half of the places, because they are larger and every place goes to a selective student. Partially selective schools usually offer 30 or 60.

If you add up the Department’s table yourself, you will get 4,248 places, not 4,338. The difference matches the 90 Aurora College places the Department lists separately, so our charts cover the 48 school listings and leave Aurora out.

What Is the Difference Between Fully and Partially Selective Schools?

A fully selective school enrols its students through the selective placement process only, so every Year 7 student arrived through the test. Baulkham Hills, Girraween, Penrith and Sydney Boys are examples. A partially selective school has two streams: local students who attend non-selective classes, and students placed through the selective process, who learn together in selective classes. Blacktown Boys, Blacktown Girls and Parramatta High are on the partially selective list.

Both types take students from anywhere in NSW. The Department says you can apply to fully, partially and agriculturally selective schools outside your local enrolment area, so where you live does not limit which schools you can list. The four agricultural high schools (Farrer, Hurlstone, James Ruse and Yanco) are fully selective and teach agriculture as a compulsory subject from Years 7 to 10. Three of them offer boarding places, and families applying to board at Farrer or Yanco apply directly to the school.

Our Baulkham Hills vs Girraween guide compares two of the best-known fully selective schools in Western Sydney.

Which Selective Schools Are Co-Ed, Boys or Girls?

The Department’s list shows places for boys and girls separately, which makes single-sex schools easy to spot: a school with “n/a” in one column only takes the other gender. Counting that way, 34 of the 48 listings are co-educational, 7 take boys only and 6 take girls only. One listing, a senior campus, has no Year 7 places at all.

From the 2027 intake, every co-educational selective and partially selective school offers equal places to girls and boys (90 and 90 at Baulkham Hills, for example). Places are still offered on test performance, and unfilled places go to qualifying students of the other gender.

List of Selective High Schools in NSW for 2027 Entry

Here is every school on the Department’s list, grouped by type, with its suburb and its Year 7 places for 2027 placement. We have copied the numbers exactly as the Department publishes them.

The list changes. Leppington High School is a new school scheduled to open in 2027 and appears under a provisional name, and Sydney Secondary College lists three campuses, one of which only teaches Years 11 and 12. Before you finalise your choices, check the Department’s list of selective high schools for the latest version.

How to Read the DoE Selective Schools List

The Department’s table is accurate but terse, and a few of its conventions trip families up. These four checks cover most of the confusion.

One caution: places are not a measure of difficulty. A school with 180 places is not necessarily easier to get into than one with 30.

Which Selective Schools Are Near Blacktown?

For a family in Blacktown, the local picture is better than many expect. Two partially selective schools are in Blacktown itself: Blacktown Boys High School, with 30 selective places for boys, and Blacktown Girls High School, with 30 for girls. Within the surrounding Western Sydney suburbs there are fully selective options at Girraween, Baulkham Hills and Penrith, the agricultural school at Carlingford, and partially selective classes at Parramatta, Granville and Auburn.

Further south and west, the list also includes partially selective schools at Wetherill Park (Prairiewood), Bonnyrigg, Macquarie Fields, Narellan Vale (Elizabeth Macarthur), Moorebank and the new Leppington school, Hurlstone Agricultural High School at Glenfield, and Richmond Agricultural College.

Test the real school-run commute before you rank a school. A short distance on a map can still mean a long trip at 8 am.

You can list up to three selective schools, and a list can mix types: for example, one fully selective school alongside one or two partially selective schools. If your child is younger, our guide to OC schools near Blacktown covers the Year 5 opportunity classes in the same area.

What Is in the Selective High School Placement Test?

Apart from boarding places at Farrer and Yanco, which families apply for directly, every school on the list fills its Year 7 selective places from the same computer-based test, sat in May of Year 6. It has four sections, each worth a quarter of the result.

Our Thinking Skills selective test guide and selective writing test guide cover the two sections that surprise students most. To explore the four sections on screen, our free Selective practice test tool offers original practice questions and writing tasks.

The Department’s position is that coaching is not necessary for the test, because the questions draw on what students learn at school up to Year 6. It publishes free practice tests, and we have gathered the official papers in our collection of official Selective practice tests. If your child also sat the Year 4 test, our OC test vs selective test comparison explains how the two differ.

When Do Selective School Applications Open for 2028 Entry?

The Department had not published 2028 dates when we checked on 10 October 2026; its general pattern is applications from November to February, the test in early May and outcomes in August. The 2027 cycle ran on these dates.

Our selective school application timeline walks through what to do at each stage, and our guide on when to start selective preparation looks at whether Year 4, 5 or 6 is the right time to begin.

How Are Selective School Offers Decided?

Offers come down to three things: your child’s test performance, the order of your school choices and the number of places at each school. You can list between one and three selective high schools. If your child’s result meets the level needed at more than one of them, the offer comes from your highest choice only, and each family receives just one offer when outcomes are first released.

There is no published cut-off for any school. The Department says the performance needed differs from school to school, because it depends on how many students apply, how they perform and how many places the school has. Two policies also shape who is offered a place:

• Equal places for girls and boys at co-educational schools from the 2027 intake, as described above.
• The Equity Placement Model, which holds up to 20% of places at each school for high potential students from four under-represented groups. There is no separate application, and unfilled places go back to general applicants.

We go deeper into scaling, preferences and why no single number decides an offer in how selective test scores work.

What Happens After Selective Results Come Out?

Results for 2027 entry were released on 19 August 2026. Reserve lists can keep producing offers until the end of Term 1 2027, but the Department is clear that a reserve position never guarantees one.

The next deadline that matters is the reserve decision date: 3 December 2026 at 3:00 pm. After it, students holding an accepted offer come off any higher choice reserve lists. Our guide to selective results and the reserve list explains each outcome and what to do before that date.

Getting Ready for the Selective Test in Blacktown

If your child is in Year 4 or 5 and you are starting to think about this list, the most useful preparation builds the skills the test actually measures: reading closely, reasoning under time pressure and writing with structure. That is how we run our selective tutoring Blacktown classes, and younger students working toward the Year 4 test can join our OC tutoring Blacktown classes.

Classes run in groups of one to five students at our centre minutes from Blacktown Station, taught by tutors with an average ATAR of 97.1. Fees are set out in full on our pricing page, and you can book a free trial with no obligation. No tutor can promise a placement, and we will not either; what good preparation does is make sure the result reflects what your child can really do.

The Bottom Line

There are 48 listings on the Department’s table, from 180-place fully selective schools to 30-place selective classes inside local high schools, and several sit close to Blacktown.

• Use the Department’s list as your source of truth, and check it again before you apply.
• Read the boys and girls columns: they tell you which schools are single-sex and how places split at co-ed schools.
• Ignore anyone who quotes a cut-off score. The Department sets none.
• Watch for the 2028 application dates. The Department’s general pattern is applications from November to February.

Choosing schools is the part of the process a family fully controls, so give it the time it deserves.

Frequently Asked Questions