AMC Past Papers: How to Use Them Properly (Years 5–8)

If your child is sitting the Australian Mathematics Competition (AMC) this year, past papers are the single most useful preparation tool you can buy. But most families use them badly: the child does a paper, gets a score, feels good or bad about it, and moves on. The score itself teaches nothing. This guide covers where to get papers legitimately, how many to do, and how to turn each one into a diagnosis that actually changes the next week of study.

Where to get AMC past papers (legally)

The only official source is the Australian Maths Trust (AMT), the not-for-profit that runs the competition.

Paid — AMT Shop (shop.amt.edu.au):

• Single-year PDFs of past AMC papers, delivered by download link after purchase.
• 2-year packs — the last two years of papers for one division (Middle Primary, Upper Primary, Junior, Intermediate or Senior). According to the AMT Shop, each pack includes an answer key but not fully worked solutions.
• 5-year packs — the last five years for one division, again with answer keys only.

Free — AMT website (amt.edu.au):

• AMT publishes free AMC practice problems with solutions for every division, from Middle Primary (Years 3–4) through to Senior (Years 11–12). These are a sensible starting point before you spend money.

For Years 5–8 specifically, you want the Upper Primary division (Years 5–6) or the Junior division (Years 7–8).

A note on the free PDFs floating around the internet: many are scanned copies shared without permission, often with wrong or missing answer keys. An official 5-year pack is inexpensive relative to the cost of practising against a faulty answer key.

How many papers should my child do?

More is not better. A realistic target for most Year 5–8 students is:

• Minimum: 3 papers — one diagnostic at the start, one mid-preparation, one in the final fortnight.
• Ideal: 4–6 papers — enough to see genuine patterns in errors without turning preparation into a grind.

One paper done properly — timed, marked, every error reviewed — is worth three done as a box-ticking exercise.

Turning a practice score into a diagnosis

Here is where most families go wrong. A raw score ("she got 78") tells you almost nothing. The structure of the paper tells you everything.

According to the Australian Maths Trust, the AMC has 30 questions — 25 multiple-choice and 5 requiring an integer answer — worth a total of 135 marks, with the questions arranged in increasing difficulty: questions 1–10 are worth 3 marks each, 11–20 are worth 4 marks, 21–25 are worth 5 marks, and 26–30 are worth 6 to 10 marks. There is no penalty for incorrect answers. (For the full award bands, see our guide to AMC scoring and awards.)

That structure gives you a built-in diagnostic. After marking, sort the errors into bands:

Two students can both score 78 with completely different diagnoses: one is dropping easy marks in Q1–10 (fix carelessness), the other is clean to Q20 and stuck after (feed them harder problems). Same score, opposite training plans.

Also track time: note where your child was up to at the halfway mark. Running out of time on Q22 is a pacing problem, not a maths problem.

The most common mistakes parents let slide

1. Doing papers without reviewing solutions. The learning is in the review, not the sitting. Since official 2- and 5-year packs include answer keys but not worked solutions, budget real time for your child to reconstruct why each wrong answer is wrong — or work through it with a teacher, tutor or structured course.
2. Untimed practice only. The AMC is 60 minutes for primary divisions and 75 minutes for secondary, per the AMT. At least half of all practice papers should be done under exact exam timing.
3. Grinding Q26–30. Parents see the 10-mark questions and aim there. For most students, the marks recovered by cleaning up Q1–20 dwarf anything available at the back of the paper.
4. Papers too early, too often. A paper every few days burns through limited material and breeds fatigue. One per week, fully reviewed, is the sustainable rhythm.
5. Ignoring the integer questions' format. Q26–30 aren't multiple-choice — there are no options to sanity-check against. Practise writing the final numeric answer carefully.

An 8-week practice schedule

The AMC is typically held in late July or early August — the 2026 competition runs Tuesday 4 to Thursday 6 August, according to the AMT. Count back eight weeks from your child's sitting date:

Fortnightly rhythm, papers as measurement, targeted work in between. That's the whole system.

FAQ