A competitive culture is quietly reshaping how Australia treats its national literacy and numeracy test. Some selective schools now ask parents to provide NAPLAN results as part of enrolment applications, treating the assessment as a gatekeeping tool rather than the diagnostic measure it was designed to be.
The practice has prompted the testing chief to take an unusually direct stance. According to recent reporting, the head of Australia's national testing program has urged parents to decline requests from in-demand schools to provide NAPLAN scores when seeking enrolment. The message is clear: this is not how the test should be used.
The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy, administered to Years 3, 5, 7, and 9 students across Australia, was created to give schools and governments a snapshot of how students are developing in core academic skills. It was never intended as an entrance examination. Teachers use the results to identify where students need support; governments use aggregated data to inform policy and funding decisions.
Yet research shows that some selective schools, particularly those with high demand for places, have begun requesting or requiring NAPLAN scores as part of their admission criteria. In Queensland, for instance, Brisbane State High School's published selection criteria explicitly reference NAPLAN results alongside other academic evidence. This represents a mission creep that worries educators and testing authorities alike.
The concern runs deeper than bureaucratic turf wars. When schools use NAPLAN as a selective tool, the incentives shift. Parents begin coaching children specifically for the test; tutoring industries grow; the focus moves from understanding a child's learning needs to gaming an admissions system. The test, designed to measure what students know about literacy and numeracy, becomes instead a barrier to entry.
There is a countervailing argument worth considering. Some schools argue they should be able to use any available data to make informed admissions decisions. If a school's selective entry criteria are transparent and publicly available, and if NAPLAN is just one factor among many (school reports, interviews, other assessments), where is the harm? Parents can choose to apply or not; they are not compelled to provide NAPLAN results.
But the testing authority's position reflects a genuine tension. When you create a nationwide assessment tool for diagnostic purposes, and then allow it to be repurposed as a gatekeeper, you change what that tool measures. Teachers may begin teaching to the test more directly. Anxiety around the assessment increases, particularly for disadvantaged students who lack access to private tutoring. The broader goal of understanding national achievement trends becomes muddied by selection effects: schools that can pick high-performing students will naturally show higher results, making it harder to separate school quality from student intake.
NAPLAN's proper place is in a teacher's toolkit for understanding individual student progress and in government's hands for policy decisions. The moment it becomes a barrier to enrolment, it ceases to serve those purposes reliably.
For parents navigating school choice in a competitive landscape, the advice from the testing authority carries practical weight. You don't have to hand over your child's NAPLAN results, and doing so may not be in your child's interests either. A school that genuinely wants to know your child's strengths and needs should ask directly through interviews, assessments and conversations. A test designed for diagnosis should remain diagnostic, not become a barrier.