How To Maximise Your Chances To Get Into a Selective High School - CSS Framework

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Hi, my name is John and today I will be teaching you how you can maximise your chances to get into a selective school.

So when I first got into Penrith High School in year 6, I realised that a lot of my friends who also went to private tutoring largely didn’t make it into any selective school. I knew this was a bit weird because I knew we were just as smart as each other and it turns out our selective exam score was very similar where we got near the 200’s. It was only until I started asking questions until I realised that a lot of their parents had a lot of misconceptions and really didn’t have a strategy in place.

Therefore, today I will be going through 3 key strategies to help you in your child’s selective school application so you don’t have to make the same mistakes so many other parents make every single year. I like to remember this using CSS framework – consistent, smart and being self-aware. Let’s get into it.

So the first part of the CSS framework is C which stands for consistent. Many parents believe that all you need to do is to just perform well on that one day where you have to do the selective exam and that decides whether you make it or not. This is not true at all. As half of your marks in English and Maths come from your internal school mark, it is so important for your child to be getting all their marks to be as high as possible throughout year 5. Principals and schools provide school assessment scores between October and December in year 5 so if you are only putting in the work at the beginning of year 6 before the exam, it can already be too late. My suggestion is to be consistent and use year 4 as a testing year where you then can adjust your approach to do really well in year 5 – whether it be in spelling tests, reading books or your weekly maths exam, everything in school counts.

The second part of the CSS framework is S for smart. This is so critical and yet parents keep making this mistake every single year. You have to be tactical – the ultimate goal is to see whether you can even get into a selective school. It is not to get into the highest selective school. It is much easier to try and transfer into a higher ranking selective school in year 8-11 when you are already in a selective school. Therefore, I recommend not apply for selective schools with entry marks that are all bunched together – Girraween 218, Sydney boys 219 and Fort street 216 for instance I 2020. They are really close together and it is very risky to put all your eggs in the small range. Instead, I suggest going for schools that are more realistic to your child’s level and have their entry score mark differ by about 10 like Girraween 218, Penrith 208 and Parramatta 201. This is because if you are sick and you cant perform at your peak, you want to have a safety net where you still get an offer.

The last part of the CSS framework is to be self-aware. you have to have a strong understanding of your child’s level. It is important to take away the bias here. If your child is struggling in the NAPLAN test and isn’t exceptionally gifted, it is probably not a good idea to go to schools like James Ruse high school where you have to be in that extremely high percentile. And this can be tough. As a parent, you are likely only going to focus on the areas where your child is doing well since you love them and gloss over the areas where they are not. You may see them in a way where they are higher than they are actually at because the truth is too confronting. I hear parents of kids that I tutor to talk about this all the time.

This phenomenon is called the better than average heuristic.  This is the idea where if you think about your own abilities or the ability of your children and compare them to others, you will have an automatic tendency to think of it in a more positive way and even exaggerate characteristics of what is actually happening. So for instance, hows tom doing in math. Even though Tom is not performing well, we might just say Tom is struggling in class because there are so many smart kids but compared to Australia, he is probably above average which is a clear example of the better than average heuristic happening again. Instead, I recommend being really self-aware and objective while taking away personal feelings. Look at their NAPLAN score, check their exam marks, are they completing school work with ease – what is their school teacher saying? Do you have a personal tutor – what are their thoughts?

Follow the CSS Framework when you are applying for a Selective High School to increase your chances of successfully receiving an offer from a school.

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