Provision of Academic Selection Tests for Secondary Gifted and Talented Programs

The Western Australian Department of Education (DoE) has a long-standing commitment to the special learning needs of gifted and talented students.
There are programs that provide challenging and motivating learning opportunities to students with exceptional academic capacity or creative talent. At secondary school level there is a variety of opportunities for students such as:
o Selective academic school;
o Selective academic programs;
o Selective arts programs; and
o Selective language programs.
Selection of students to these Gifted and Talented schools and programs is conducted via a test with four (4) components: Writing, Reading Comprehension, Quantitative Reasoning (Maths and Science) and Non-Verbal Reasoning. Each test component is about 30 minutes in duration. The function of the Selection Test is to identify students with exceptional ability and academic potential. The Gifted and Talented policy targets the top 2.5% of students who show giftedness in academic learning and potential.