‘It’s a bit extreme’: Manha’s gruelling daily routine ahead of the selective schools test

For the past 18 months, 11-year-old Manha Sarker’s life has revolved around the NSW selective schools test. She studies every day, does three different kinds of coaching and quit all other activities so she could focus on preparing for the 2½-hour test this week.

It’s the first thing she thinks about in the morning and the last thing she thinks about at night. “It’s like a constant on my mind,” she said.

Manha Sarker is one of thousands of students taking the 2025 selective schools test.Credit: Louie Douvis

Manha is one of 17,559 year-six students aiming to secure one of about 4200 places at the state’s top free high schools. Held from May 2 to 4 in various testing centres across NSW, students will be tested on reading, writing, maths and critical thinking skills. This year, for the first time, the test will be online.

To secure a place, most parents spend thousands of dollars on coaching and private tutors. For three-quarters of students, their efforts will be wasted.

Students are allowed to preference three schools of the 47 with selective places across NSW. Manha’s top preference is Sydney Girls (ranked 17th in the 2024 HSC), which, if she’s successful, would mean a three-hour commute every day from her home in south-western Sydney.

Her other two preferences are St George Girls High School (38th) and Hurlstone Agricultural High School (44th), both of which are lower than the nearby Al-Faisal College, where Manha will go if she doesn’t get a spot in a selective school. The college is a low-fee private school and was ranked 22nd in the HSC last year, and it had the strongest success rate in advanced and extension maths.

However, her family is hoping one of the selective schools with their “reputation, the name and the fame” will offer a more holistic education involving sport and music.

“You know, [it’s about] getting more comfortable with people outside our community and religion as well,” her mother Riffat Khan said. “So that’s another reason we really were trying to get into a good selective school.”

Khan is a GP and said she is waiting for Manha’s results before deciding whether her family should move to an area closer to school.

“Honestly, my career is on pause,” Khan said. “It’s a bit extreme sometimes. I wanted to see where she’s getting into to probably choose where we’re going to live, and then set up my work and my husband’s work.”

The private coaching industry and children under pressure

Like many students, Manha began preparing for the test early last year. She stopped athletics and tennis.

Every Tuesday and Friday, Manha has tutoring for 2½ hours. On Saturdays, she does another three hours of tutoring and has another hour of private coaching on Sundays. On the days she doesn’t have coaching, Manha studies at home. “It’s taking time from other fun things that I could do,” she said.

The Department of Education does not regulate the private tutoring industry.

In 2020, it announced a fourth section of the selective test, the “thinking skills” section, designed to be “uncoachable”.

Data shows most students at the top selective schools are from privileged families. This is despite the introduction in 2022 of designated “equity” places for students from disadvantage. Up to 20 per cent of the 4200 places are reserved for these students but only if their marks are within 10 per cent of the minimum accepted by schools for regular applicants.

Of 4248 places on offer for last year’s test, 849 were reserved for students under the Equity Placement Model – just over half were used. This was a 10 per cent increase on students placed under the model from the year before.

Mohan Dhall, chief executive of the Australian Tutoring Association, said the selective test no longer served its intended purpose of providing gifted children from any background a taxpayer-funded, highly regarded education.

“It might have had a utility at some point in time,” he said. Because Sydney’s population has grown and the selective schools’ intake has not, the test is now based on whose parents have access to tutoring rather than the child’s merit.

He believes 90 per cent of students have some kind of coaching before sitting the exam.

“Opportunity for all means not those who have been getting coaching so they can hold a badge up and say, ‘I’m in a particular school’,” he said.

‘It’s always about education – this is how we’re brought up’

Manha is not the only one feeling the pressure; almost all her friends are studying for the test. Crying about poor practice test results is common among them.

“Just if the pressure gets to them, they start crying. If they’ve gotten lower [marks] than everyone, they might start crying, and then if something’s too hard for them, they might start crying. [It’s] pretty much the same for me as well,” she said.

Manha said getting a spot is her goal, not her parents’. “I really want to get into a good school so I can explore new things … It’s for me,” she said.

Manha is the daughter of migrants from Bangladesh. Her mother said placing such a large emphasis on education is inextricable from south Asian culture.

“I mean, in our cultural background, in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, I tell you before even she was born, I knew about selective, that’s how it is honestly … we all know about it,” she said.

“For us, from where we belong, education holds up at the primary aspect of your life. This is how we’re brought up. So we know that [if there’s] anything that can change your life in any way, it would be your education.”

Riffat Khan with her daughter, Manha Sarker, at home in Sydney’s south-west.Credit: Louie Douvis

At family gatherings and when celebrating Eid, everyone asks how Manha is going in her preparation. Despite all the hours Manha does, Khan knows there are other children doing a lot more. For one, it is Manha and not her mother who chooses when she studies and when she’s had enough.

“She’s very open and we have built her up like this. She is allowed to say what she feels. If I felt like, no, it’s too much for her, I would have stopped it before … I mean, if you ask me, compared to other peers, she’s doing less,” she said.

“They’re avoiding social gatherings because it’s a distraction, but we’re trying to have a balance. But still, it’s a lot, I know. If somebody doesn’t know the process and hasn’t gone through [it], hasn’t seen somebody doing it, they would definitely think it’s too much.”

NSW Minister for Education Prue Car promised in 2024 to have a gifted education program in all public high schools.

“We want every child to have the opportunity to reach their full potential at school, with high expectations for achievement,” she said.

In the future, Dhall believes selective schools tests will be viewed as a failed experiment.

“We’ll suddenly look back and say there were all these red flags that occurred, but because this is the public school’s badge of authority to say ‘look at what we’re doing successfully’, we’ll look back and say ‘why did we do that? And to what end?’

“I think we’ll just say ‘well, that experiment didn’t work’.”

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