What NAPLAN tests, and when your child sits it

A short, plain answer to the questions parents ask first, with a pointer to the official source for anything that changes year to year.

Who sits it

Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Every student in those year levels sits the same set of assessments, in the same window, across the country.

Years 2, 4, 6 and 8 do not sit NAPLAN, which is often read as "nothing to do until next year". That reading is worth resisting: the gaps a Year 4 has are the gaps a Year 5 sits the test with, and they are easier to close with twelve months than with two.

What it covers

Four domains:

• Reading: passages with questions attached, testing comprehension rather than recall.
• Writing: one full piece against a prompt, either narrative or persuasive.
• Conventions of Language: spelling, grammar and punctuation.
• Numeracy: number, algebra, measurement, space, statistics and probability.

Writing is the one that surprises people, because it is a single sustained piece rather than a set of questions, and it is marked criterion by criterion. We wrote about how that marking works in How NAPLAN writing is actually marked.

When it happens

The test sits in a two-week window in March. The exact dates move each year, and so occasionally does the format, so take those from ACARA rather than from us or from a school newsletter: nap.edu.au.

What the report says

Since 2023 results are reported against four proficiency levels rather than the older ten-band scale:

• Exceeding
• Strong
• Developing
• Needs additional support

Two things about this are worth knowing before the report arrives. The levels are set against a standard for that year level, not against other children in the class, so a level is a statement about what a child can do rather than where they rank. And the boundary between two levels can be a small number of marks, which means a child sitting near a boundary can move a level on a result that is not really different.

What it is not

NAPLAN is a snapshot of four domains on four mornings in March. It does not assess most of what a child does at school, and it is not designed to. It is useful as a check on whether the foundational skills are where they should be, and it is genuinely useful for that. Treating it as a verdict on a child is reading far more into it than the test itself claims.

NAPLAN Expert is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by ACARA, and NAPLAN is a trademark of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. Anything official, including test dates and the public demonstration tests, comes from nap.edu.au directly.