HAST Test 2026/2027: The Complete Guide for Parents

What is HAST?

HAST is an academic aptitude test developed and administered by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). Schools across NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia use it to identify academically gifted students for selective entry, scholarships, and accelerated or extension classes.

The key thing to understand about HAST is what it isn't: it's not a curriculum test. It doesn't check what your child has memorised from the classroom. It's a reasoning test, designed to measure higher-order thinking and academic potential — which is why rote content revision does very little to move the needle, and structured reasoning practice does a lot.

ACER built HAST specifically to avoid the "ceiling effect" that shows up in general-population tests like NAPLAN, where a large share of high-ability students all score near-perfect and become impossible to distinguish from one another. HAST's questions are pitched at a difficulty level that keeps separating students even at the very top of the ability range.

Who sits HAST, and when

HAST is offered at two levels:

Each participating school sets its own test date and registers it directly with ACER, so timing varies by school rather than following one national calendar. Because of this, the first step for any family is confirming the specific date and component package with the school your child is applying to — this information sits with the school, not with ACER centrally.

Test components

Schools choose a package of components rather than using every section by default. The full component set is:

Most schools run either a four-component package (all of the above) or a three-component package that drops one section — commonly Written Expression, since it requires manual marking. Total testing time typically runs around two to two-and-a-half hours, delivered as a paper-based assessment (HAST does not have an online or on-screen format).

How HAST is scored

Reading Comprehension, Mathematical Reasoning and Abstract Reasoning are multiple-choice and machine-scored — one point per correct answer, with no penalty for guessing or getting a question wrong. Written Expression is assessed separately by trained human markers.

Results come back as raw scores, standardised scores, percentiles and stanines for each component individually — schools don't receive one combined number, and it's up to each school to decide how the components are weighted and what threshold matters for their program.

Schools typically take nine to ten working days to receive results after testing, though timing can vary school to school.

How to prepare — properly

Because HAST tests reasoning rather than recall, cramming doesn't work the way it might for a content-based exam. What does work:

• Start 3–6 months out. Reasoning ability develops with consistent, spaced exposure to test-style questions — not a two-week intensive block right before the date.
• Practice on paper, not just on screen. HAST is a pen-and-paper test. Have your child read passages from print, work maths problems by hand, and write extended responses with a pen under timed conditions, so test day doesn't feel unfamiliar.
• Cover all four components, not just the ones that feel comfortable. Abstract Reasoning in particular gets neglected because it doesn't map to anything taught in school — but it's frequently the component that has the most room to move with targeted practice, precisely because most students have never encountered it before starting HAST prep.
• Time every practice session. Pacing under time pressure is a skill in itself, especially for Reading Comprehension and Mathematical Reasoning, where students often know the content but run out of time.
• Treat Written Expression as a separate skill to train. Because it's the one component scored by a human rather than a machine, structure, clarity and a strong opening matter as much as raw creativity — it rewards practice on planning and pacing a response within a fixed time limit.