When to start preparing

There are two separate pathways into a Victorian selective or accelerated program, and they run on different clocks. Which one applies depends on your child's year level now.

Pathway	We teach	Tested
Year 9 Entry Melbourne High, Mac.Robertson, Nossal, Suzanne Cory	Current Years 7 and 8	Partway through Year 8
Year 7 Entry SEAL, ACE and similar accelerated programs	Current Years 5 and 6	During Year 6, mostly late July to August

The short answer

Building the fundamentals and preparing for a specific exam are two different jobs. Most of the confusion about when to start comes from treating them as one thing, and from assuming there is only one exam.

Fundamentals. Reading widely, being asked to explain what was read, mental arithmetic, and writing often enough that it isn't an event. That's Year 5 and Year 6 work on either pathway, and it's the part that can't be caught up in a hurry later.
Exam preparation. Format, timing, question types, and marked practice under exam conditions. When that starts depends entirely on which exam your child is sitting, and the two pathways sit about two years apart.

So if your child is in Year 5 or Year 6, we wouldn't start Year 9 selective entry preparation yet. That paper is still two or three years away. Reading is the section that responds least well to a short run at it and it carries the most weight, so wide reading, and being made to explain what they have read, does more at that age than any course.

Year 7 entry is the pathway that age group should be looking at, and it runs on the opposite timing. The accelerated program tests are sat during Year 6, so a Year 5 or Year 6 family is already inside the preparation window rather than years short of it. What that means in practice is set out below.

Year 9 entry: the window is Year 7 to mid Year 8

The exam is sat partway through Year 8, so the realistic preparation window is Year 7 and the first half of Year 8. That is earlier than most families expect, and it's also why the program takes students from Year 7 rather than sooner.

A Year 5 or Year 6 student is two or three years out from this paper. Starting on it that early doesn't buy much, and it takes the time that the reading and the arithmetic need. That is a statement about this exam only. If the same child is aiming at a Year 7 place, they are preparing for a different test on a much shorter clock, which is the next section.

Year 7 entry: the test lands in Year 6

Accelerated entry into Year 7, which in Victoria mostly means SEAL and the equivalent programs at other schools, is tested during Year 6, the year before a child would start. Most schools close registrations in July and run their tests from late July through August, so the paperwork falls due months before the test itself.

That changes what Year 5 and Year 6 are for on this pathway. The exam sits inside those two years rather than years past them, so preparing for it in Year 5 or Year 6 is the right timing rather than an early start. The fundamentals below still come first, since each school sets its own format and the underlying skills are what carries across all of them.

The time-critical job is yours rather than your child's: work out which schools you're aiming at, then confirm their registration dates directly with them. Each school runs its own test, usually through an external provider, on its own date and to its own format, so the shortlist decides what the preparation looks like. A missed form ends the pathway before any preparation could have mattered.

Our own Year 7 Entry stream is being built for this group, current years 5 and 6, and hasn't launched yet. That page sets out what has and hasn't been decided about it.

Independent school scholarships run earlier again: applications commonly open around September of Year 5 for a sitting early the following year. There is no single date to work back from, because each school sets its own, so the dates here are the usual pattern rather than a promise about any particular school.

What Year 5 and Year 6 should actually be doing

Three things, whichever pathway you're on, and none of them need a course. On the Year 7 pathway the exam work sits on top of these rather than instead of them.

Reading widely, and being asked about it. Not minutes logged in a reading diary. What happened, why a character did that, what an unfamiliar word meant. A child who can explain a page they have just read is already doing what the Reading section tests.
Mental arithmetic, until it's automatic. Tables, fractions and percentages without a calculator and without a page of working. The Year 9 paper allows around 50 seconds a question, so slow arithmetic costs twice: once in the time, and again in the attention it takes off the actual question.
Writing something regularly. Half a page is plenty. The point is that a blank page and a time limit shouldn't be new the first time it counts.

Why the order matters

Reading speed, vocabulary and mental arithmetic can't be crammed. They build over months of ordinary use, which is why they belong in the years before the exam work rather than in the middle of it. Technique, timing and question types move much faster once a student already has that underlying speed, and that's what a preparation year is for.

If you are already close

It needs a tailored plan rather than an attempt to cover everything. Technique and timed practice are the highest yield of the options available, and they return the fastest when time is short.