If your child is in Year 5 or Year 6 and you're considering a Gifted and Talented (GATE) place for high school, the process is more straightforward than it first looks — but the timeline is unforgiving. Miss the application window and you wait a full year. Here's the short version every WA parent should know.
The process in five steps
- Apply online through the Department of Education while your child is in Year 6 (applications generally open early in the year — always confirm the current closing date on the Department's website).
- Choose your preferred schools and programs — Academic, Languages, or Arts streams across participating schools, including fully selective Perth Modern School.
- Sit the ASET — the Academic Selective Entrance Test, usually held in the first half of the year. It's one sitting, paper-based, and covers reading comprehension, writing, quantitative reasoning and abstract reasoning.
- Wait for results and offers — performance across the four sections is combined into an overall score, and offers for Year 7 places typically arrive around the middle of the year, with later rounds if places remain.
- Accept your place by the stated deadline — offers lapse if not accepted in time.
What the ASET actually tests
The ASET is not a school curriculum exam. It measures reasoning under strict time pressure — reading insight, mathematical thinking, abstract pattern recognition, and the ability to produce a focused piece of writing in a very short window. A child can be top of their class and still find the format unfamiliar, which is why timed practice matters more than extra worksheets.
Want the full parent walkthrough?
Inside our GATE Practice Portal, subscribers get our detailed parents' guide — covering how to choose school preferences strategically, how the scoring works, a month-by-month preparation timeline, and the questions parents ask us most. It sits alongside full-length timed ASET-style mock exams your child can practise on at home.