HomeOur approach
Our approach
Built to the skills the test measures — and checked before your child sees it.
Korva prepares Year 6 students for selective entry testing in Western Australian public schools. Below is what we align to, how questions are made, and — just as important — what we check before one is allowed to reach a child.
- Prepares for
- The Year 6 selective entry test
- Sections
- All four
- Standard
- Year 6 throughout
- Mistakes
- Return the next day
This page is set out in four parts. The programme is what your child works through each week. Our teaching approach is how Korva helps when a question is hard. What we align to is the test and the four skills it measures. How questions are checked is the quality control that sits between a question being written and a child seeing it.
01 · The programme
What your child works through
The exam tests four things, and Korva practises the same four. We align to the skills — we do not reproduce real test questions, and we could not: every item your child sees is generated for them.
Reading comprehension
Full-length passages at genuine exam word counts. Questions turn on inference, tone, authorial choice and the function of a paragraph — not on finding a fact and copying it back out.
Quantitative reasoning
Multi-step reasoning over ratio, rate, pattern and deduction, often built on a shared stimulus — a table, a diagram, a price list — the way the real paper does it. Not single-operation arithmetic.
Abstract reasoning
Entirely visual, as on the real paper. Every figure is drawn by our own rendering engine and shown as a picture. A shape described in words would be a different task, so we never do it.
Written expression
One extended piece from an abstract statement, in whatever form your child chooses, marked against the three criteria the exam scores: ideas, organisation and expression.
Around the four sections
- Section practice One question at a time, in any of the four sections, at the difficulty your child has chosen for that section.
- Weekly practice test A full paper each week at the real per-question pacing, with results and a section-by-section review afterwards. Four sections, on the clock.
- Weekly Challenge A harder set each week, released only after a human has approved that week’s content. Some weeks it opens later than others, and the app says so rather than showing an empty page.
- Masterclass lessons Taught lessons in each section. Fo, Korva’s tutor, works one question through on a board, step by step, and writes the reason for each step beside it. The lessons teach; section practice is where your child then tries questions on their own.
- Weekly Deep Dive One topic a week, chosen from the topic your child has found hardest so far in their own practice, with a short lesson and self-check questions. If they have not practised enough for a weakness to show, it says so and sends them to practise first.
- Mistakes come back Anything your child got wrong returns the next day, and keeps returning until it is answered correctly. A question they gave up on comes back too.
02 · Our teaching approach
Reasoning first, answers last
A child learns most at the moment a question is hard. Everything below is about what happens at that moment — and about making sure the answer is the last thing handed over, not the first.
- 1Worked reasoning on every answer Every answer comes back with the reasoning, including why the tempting wrong option was tempting. A tick on its own teaches nothing about the next question.
- 2A ladder of 3 hints Each question allows up to 3 hints, and each one goes a step further than the last: where to look, then what to compare, then the method. No hint names the answer or the option to pick.
- 3Revealing the answer costs the mark After the last hint, your child can ask to see the answer and the full worked explanation. The question is then recorded as not correct and returns the next day — so revealing is a way out of a stuck question, never a shortcut to a good score.
- 4Fo asks before he tells Fo is Korva’s tutor. His hints point and ask — “what is the question actually asking for?” — rather than tell, and a walkthrough of a question is only available once your child has committed to an answer of their own.
- 5Mistakes return the next day Wrong answers go into a mistake list and come back the following day, so a mistake gets a second look instead of a shrug.
- 6A skill map from every attempt Your child’s skill map updates after every single attempt, and you see it skill by skill on your dashboard. Writing is reported as written feedback, never as a percentage.
- 7Difficulty chosen by people Your child chooses easy, medium or hard for each section. You can lock a level, or set the highest level they may choose, from Settings. Korva does not change the difficulty on its own.
03 · What we align to
The Year 6 academic selective entry test
Western Australian students sit the academic selective entry test in Year 6, for entry to academic selective programmes from Year 7. Korva is built to the four skills that test measures, and nothing else.
| Tested skill | What it asks of a child |
|---|---|
| Reading comprehension | Reading a full passage closely and inferring what it does not say outright: tone, purpose, and why a writer made a choice. |
| Quantitative reasoning | Working through several steps of number reasoning, often from a table, diagram or list, where the route to the answer is not spelled out. |
| Abstract reasoning | Finding the rule behind a sequence or grid of figures and applying it to pick the missing one. |
| Written expression | Writing one extended piece from a short statement, judged on ideas, organisation and expression. |
04 · How questions are checked
How a question is made
Generated to a specification
Each section has a written specification describing the passage types, question shapes and option vocabulary the exam uses. A question is generated against that specification, at one of four difficulty tiers, and at Year 6 level — there is no easier year band hiding underneath.
Deliberately varied
Before generating, the format is pre-picked from a weighted set, so the same easy shape cannot keep winning. A child who has only met one question shape has practised recognition, not reasoning.
Checked, not trusted
Generated content is checked before it is stored. Cheap structural checks run first — length, coherence, whether the options are actually distinct — and only the survivors go on to be judged on substance.
Explained, then re-asked
Every answer comes back with the reasoning, including why the tempting wrong option was tempting. Anything your child got wrong returns the next day automatically, and their skill map updates after every single attempt.
What we check before it ships
Abstract reasoning is solved independently before it is served
The most damaging thing a generator can do is mark the wrong option correct and write a confident justification for it. So an abstract puzzle is not accepted on the generator’s word. A second, stronger model is handed a plain-English description of the figure and asked to solve it. If its answer disagrees with the one marked correct, the question is thrown away and regenerated. It gets three attempts, and then it is dropped.
The hard tier has to earn the label
“Hard” is a claim about reasoning depth — three or more independent moves, with the route to the answer hidden rather than signposted — not about how long a question looks. Every item claiming that tier is scored against a written difficulty rubric by an independent judge, and the judge is fail-closed: an error, a missing key or a reply we cannot read all mean the same thing, which is that the question does not ship.
We do not grade our own reading content against a paper we do not have
Our difficulty calibration is not equally strong in every section, and we would rather say so than round it up. Abstract and quantitative difficulty are calibrated against past-paper material we hold. Reading is not. It is judged against a written criterion only — we hold no reading paper, so any claim that reading was measured against one would be a claim we cannot support. That is also why a question labelled hard by structure alone is re-checked on substance before it is put in front of a child.
Written expression is marked, not scored
A piece of writing has no single correct answer, so Korva never gives writing a percentage score — not on your child’s home page, not on your dashboard, and not inside the test-ready score. It reports what was written and the feedback against each of the three criteria. A percentage there would be a number we invented, and an invented number is worse than no number.
See a question before you decide.
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