Year 4 GATE Classes in Perth

Why Year 4 is the strongest starting point

The WA GATE exam sits in March of Year 6. A Year 4 student starting with us has roughly 18 to 24 months of runway: enough time to build pattern fluency in all four sections without the pressure that builds when a family starts later. In our 2025 cohort, students who came in at Year 4 averaged a 17-percentile improvement by exam day, compared with 9 percentiles for students who started in Year 5.

That said, more time only matters if it's used well. We deliberately keep Year 4 sessions shorter and lighter on quantity, focusing instead on the underlying skills: vocabulary range, sentence sense, reading speed, pattern recognition. By the time these students hit Year 5, they have a foundation that makes the harder material feel familiar.

What a Year 4 weekend session looks like

Same Saturday or Sunday slot as our Year 5 cohort, same Rossmoyne SHS venue, but the in-class material is calibrated to Year 4 reading age and confidence. Each session is split:

• Maths: Quantitative Reasoning fundamentals (place value, fractions, ratios) plus Abstract Reasoning pattern practice
• English: Reading Comprehension with shorter passages, Written Expression with image prompts that build narrative confidence rather than testing it
• Take-home weekly workbook
• FREE AsetPrep Premium subscription for the term, accessible from home all week

Year 4 students sit in the same room as Year 5 students because the lesson structure is the same. What differs is the difficulty of the worked examples and the expectations on independent practice.

What parents of Year 4 students should focus on

The biggest single thing you can do as a parent of a Year 4 child is build a daily reading habit: 20 minutes of quiet reading per day, of texts slightly above their comfort zone. Vocabulary and sentence-sense underpin three of the four GATE sections (Reading Comprehension, Writing, and the wordy half of Quantitative Reasoning), so the dividend on this habit is enormous.

The second biggest is to not over-do it. Year 4 children burn out faster than Year 5s. Two structured GATE-focused hours on a weekend, plus 20-minute home practice sessions on 3-4 weekdays, is plenty. Anything more and you risk the “child hates the subject by the time the exam comes” trap.

Enrol your Year 4 in Term 3

Term 3 runs 25 July to 27 September 2026, 10 weekend classes at Rossmoyne SHS. Year 4 enrolment is on the same form as Year 5. Just select Year 4 when filling out your child's details.

Free Year 4 GATE Mock Exam

Before you commit, sit our Free GATE Mock Exam at Rossmoyne SHS in July. Year 4 sittings are welcome and get a Year-4-calibrated results report so you know exactly where your child stands today, before you spend a dollar.