The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a series of tests focused on basic skills that are administered to Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

The NAPLAN tests for 2020 were cancelled on 20 March 2020 due to "widespread disruption to schools" caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.

[5] In November 2023, a review commissioned by the West Australian teachers' union recommended that NAPLAN should be scrapped in favour of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

[7] According to New South Wales Public Schools the NAPLAN tests, which commenced in 2008, were instigated after the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) determined that "national testing in literacy and numeracy would proceed for the full cohort of students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 from 2008 onward".

[8] The NAPLAN tests would be used to determine if students were performing either above, at or below the National Minimum Standard in the areas of reading, language conventions, writing and numeracy skills for their particular year level.

[9] According to ACARA the main purpose of the NAPLAN tests is to measure whether literacy and numeracy skills and knowledge that provide the critical foundation for other learning and for their productive and rewarding participation in the community.

In essence the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) influence brought about a series of tests to determine whether students being prepared for later life appropriately in the present day school system.

[10] The development of the NAP tests began in 1999 when the Australian ministers of education worked together to produce the Adelaide declaration on national goals for schooling in the 21st century which sought to make all young Australian successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens.

[11] ACARA claims in their MySchool fact sheet that "processes have been put in place to ensure that NAPLAN is a valid and reliable measurement of students' literacy and numeracy ability".

[12] It further goes on to state that "NAPLAN has a number of purposes including reporting national and jurisdictional achievements in literacy and numeracy as well as providing accurate and reliable measures of student and school performance.

The Validity and Reliability in Quality Assessment in relation to NAPLAN can be summed up by ACARA in that they use an equating process to "provide a high level of assurance as to the reliability of comparisons between years" and that this process ensures that "any test difference has been taken into account before making statements about one year's results compared to the next".

Apart from the fact that the test is given mid-year so not all learning may have been successfully completed as would be expected by the end of the year for that particular grade,[21] writes that Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said some schools "probably have devoted too much time to NAPLAN".

One of the important points to consider however with the NAPLAN tests is that, especially in relation to numeracy, not all areas can have immediately foreseeable real-world application however that does not necessarily mean that the questions are unimportant.

[citation needed] The NAPLAN Data Service identify areas of strength or weakness within a school or classroom.

[24] The results are graded along a series of ten bands based on achieving complex solutions to questions and spanning all age groups.