NSW Premier's Spelling Bee

Years 2 to 6

The Premier's Spelling Bee is a fun and educational way for primary school students to engage with and improve their spelling.

The program includes activities that encourage students to become more confident users of language through broadening their vocabulary, and promotes improved literacy skills in conjunction with the NSW English K-10 syllabus.

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The 2023 Premier's Spelling Bee

Word lists

The Bee is open to students in NSW Public, Community and Central Schools in two categories.

Junior Spelling Bee – Years 3 and 4 (Year 2 are welcome)
Senior Spelling Bee – Years 5 and 6

The 2023 word lists will be available on enrolment, via the confirmation email you will receive or the below links. These will become active from the opening date. Please read all copyright conditions carefully, so you may distribute the lists according to licence agreements.

All schools who enrolled in 2022 will receive an invitation and link when the Bee launches.

If your school was not enrolled last year, please email spellingbee@det.nsw.edu.au and I will add you to the database.

All lists are password protected. The below wordlist links will become active from the enrolment launch.

The password will be available on school enrolment.

Juniors – Years 3 and 4

Junior simple lists
Junior annotated lists

Seniors – Years 5 and 6

Senior simple lists
Senior annotated lists

Copyright notice

The NSW Premier’s Spelling Bee 2022 junior and senior word lists are for your personal use only. No part of this word list covered by copyright may be reproduced, copied, shared or made available on the internet, via email, on an intranet, or by any other means without written permission of the publisher. Copyright © Macquarie Dictionary Publishers 2022 | macquariedictionary.com.au

2023 key dates

Open for schools March 2023 Term 1 Week TBC
Closing for schools and Regional names deadline Friday 30 June 2023 Term 2 Week 10
Regional finals Monday 07 to Friday 18 August 2023 Term 3 Weeks 4 and 5
State finals Friday 3 or 10 November (TBC) Term 4 Week 4 or 5

Please note – One Junior and one Senior student represent their school at regional finals.

2023 regional finals will be held using video connections. One senior and one junior speller from each regional will then go onto State finals.

The Premier’s Spelling Bee State Finals

Friday 4 November 2022

The best of the best gathered to battle out for the crown of NSW public primary schools’ best speller. The 30 students in each competition were drawn from over 1700 students competing in Regional Finals, from the 167,700 students participating state-wide.

Host schools for the day, both of whom had contestants in the finals, were Lidcombe Public School and in the afternoon senior session, Epping Public School.

Congratulations to all out wonderful spellers, and we hope you eventually enjoyed the day!

ABC once again hosted the exciting State Finals of the Premier’s Spelling Bee. The students had Josh Szeps announcing the Junior category, and after 11 rounds, the winner was Saarth Deo from Wentworthville Public School, with Isaac Hood from Jesmond Public School running up. The contest was a tough 11 rounds, only 3 of which were taken from 'seen' lists supplied by the Bee, the later 8 rounds coming from words from 'unseen' lists.

The senior competition at 1:30 went to 10 rounds with Toni Matthews announcing. The eventual victor was Wilson Han, from St Ives North Public School, winning over Vishnu Visweswaran from John Palmer Public School. The students were given 4 rounds taken from the supplied lists but it took 6 rounds on unfamiliar words to decide a winner in a very competitive field.

Congratulations to each of our state finalists, many of whom came from far away, even through floods and flight delays, to compete at our first live State Final since 2019.

And just a reminder that the Bee will be back in 2023, first student day of Term 2.

View photos from the finals

Resources

The spelling bee resource page contains a wide variety of resources are available for use in the preparation of students for the Premier's Spelling Bee in 2022.

There are also a range of school resources available to support the organisation of a spelling bee.

Video – How to run a school competition for the Premier's Spelling Bee (Duration 19:04)