Selective Reading practice questions for 2027, with OC Reading
The OC Reading section is 14 questions in 40 minutes. The OC questions for this page are being checked before they go up. Until then, the full papers are free: sit a whole Reading paper, marked on the same test screen.
Questions being prepared
We publish a question here only after a person has checked it, its answer and its explanation. The OC set is not ready yet.
Free OC papers: the Department's sample tests and our free online sets.
Reading question types
- Reading question types: cloze, extract matching and multiple texts
- What is a cloze question, and how to answer it
- Matching extracts to statements
- Poetry questions in the selective test
- Inference, tone and author's purpose
- Vocabulary for the selective test, and how to build it
Sit the full paper free
A whole OC Reading paper under the real time limit, then every question explained.
Questions families ask
What is in the Selective Reading test?
17 questions worth 38 marks in 45 minutes. Some questions are worth more than one mark: a cloze asks for several sentences to be placed in a text, and an extract question matches several statements to different texts. The rest are multiple-choice comprehension questions on texts that can include poetry.
What is in the OC Reading test?
14 questions in 40 minutes, pitched at Year 4, with the same kinds of question as the Selective paper.
What is a cloze question?
A text with sentences taken out. Your child chooses which sentence fits each gap from a list that includes one sentence too many. The clues are in the sentences either side of each gap.
Why do strong readers still drop marks in Reading?
Usually because of time and method rather than understanding: they reread whole texts, or choose an answer that is true but not what the question asked. The worked explanations show where in the text each answer comes from.
How should my child use these questions?
Read the question before the text, answer without help, then check it and read the explanation, which points to the line in the text that decides the answer.
Where can my child sit a full Reading paper?
The free papers page has the Department's sample tests and our free online sets, which are marked for you on the same test screen as these questions.