The three main education providers in Victoria are Government schools (1613 schools), Catholic schools (484 schools) and the Independent schools (692 schools). Non-government schools are often called Private Schools.  Many private schools offer scholarships to students from year 4 to year 12 for their academic excellence. Some also offer scholarships to students who display excellence in other areas. 

The main years for scholarship offering are: year 4, year 7 and year 9. To be offered a scholarship, students need to sit the scholarship examinations in the year before (in their year 3, year 6 and year 8).

Scholarship examinations for private schools have a different purpose from ordinary classroom tests. While an ordinary school exam aims to measure what has already been taught and should have been learnt, scholarship exams aim to predict the future achievement of the child. Understanding the content and format of the exam is the first step in your child's preparation. Most of the tests include the components of: Writing (creative writing and analytical writing), Reading Comprehension, Math/Science, Reasonings (including verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, abstract reasoning and spatial reasoning). The contents of each test are similar but you will note that the ACER format , Robert Allwell format and Edutest format differ in their format (the number of the papers, number of the question in each paper and the time, etc).

It is important to watch carefully for the dates of scholarship exams for any school in which you are interested. You usually have from three to six weeks to make applications. Even the April exams have closing dates in March. The earliest exams are generally held from mid February to early March. For many years the Cooperative Scholarship Testing Program (CSTP) conducted by ACER has been held in the second week of May. For 2011, the date is 14 February. (From November 2010, school websites will start to update their scholarship details.)

The competitions for scholarships are intense. Therefore to be successful in scholarship tests, preparation is vital. Our centre, established 1995, is specialized in exam preparation for private schools scholarships. All our teachers are qualified, experienced and dedicated.  We provide the help they need and ensure our students can perform at their best and obtain a scholarship or place.  Each year, we see over 85% of our students obtain private school scholarship or place at selective high schools/accelerate learning classes. (Next time, we will briefly introduce accelerate learning classes.)

If you need more information in regarding to private school scholarships or if you feel we can help your child, please contact us 9689 9988 Monday to Friday 11:00am to 4:00pm or 0416 178 888 at anytime.  Alternatively, you can visit our head office and education bookshop in Footscray.  In our bookshop, you can definitely find some books for your child’s scholarship preparation.