Perth Modern Cutoff Score: what TSS you actually need

Updated June 2026.

Perth Modern School is the only fully academically selective public school in Western Australia. Every Year 7 spot is allocated by ranking ASET (GATE) scores from highest to lowest until the intake is filled, nothing else. That makes the “cutoff” question genuinely answerable: it's the Total Standard Score (TSS) of the lowest student offered a spot in a given year.

How TSS is calculated

TSS is a scaled, standardised score computed by the Department of Education across all four GATE sections (Reading Comprehension, Written Expression, Quantitative Reasoning, Abstract Reasoning). Raw marks are converted to standardised scores per section, then summed. The maximum is roughly 300; in practice anything above 250 is exceptional.

Two important properties: (1) sections are weighted equally, so a single weak section can sink an otherwise strong total; and (2) the cohort distribution shifts year to year, so the same raw score doesn't always produce the same TSS.

Recent Perth Modern cut-offs

Specific cut-offs aren't officially published, but based on tracking our own students' outcomes against their TSS over multiple years:

Most recent years have seen the Perth Modern cut-off sit in roughly the 240 to 255 TSS band.
2024 was towards the upper end of that band, reflecting a strong cohort.
2025 looked slightly more accessible at the bottom of the offer list, but the working assumption for 2027 should be aim for 250+ TSS.

For comparison, the next-tier GATE programs (Rossmoyne SHS Languages, Willetton SHS Academic, Shenton GATE Academic) typically sit around 215-235 TSS, so the gap between Perth Modern and the next-best programs is meaningful but not insurmountable.

What that means for prep targets

If Perth Modern is the goal, the realistic in-mock target you should be aiming for by November of the year before the exam is around 250 TSS, not the cut-off itself. There's noise in the exam-day performance, so you want a cushion above the cut-off rather than just at it.

Practically: that means each section is averaging around 62-65 out of a per-section max of about 75. The most reliable path to that is consistent depth across all four sections, not heroic performance in two.

If Perth Modern is a stretch, that's fine

The realistic majority of Perth GATE-prep families do not get Perth Modern offers, and that's genuinely fine: Rossmoyne SHS Languages, Willetton SHS, Shenton and Mount Lawley are all serious selective programs. We'd rather your child confidently lock in one of those than sweat the Perth Modern hairline.

Find out where you stand

The cleanest way to test for the Perth Modern target is to sit our Free GATE Mock Exam at Rossmoyne SHS this July. Your results email will explicitly tell you which sections are tracking towards a Perth Modern band and which aren't. From there you can decide whether the goal is realistic and what the prep plan needs to do.