Queensland Minister for Education Mr John-Paul Langbroek has announced that cyclone-impacted schools will have the option to delay the start of NAPLAN.
Instead of holding the national assessments from this week, impacted schools in South East Queensland can commence from Monday, 17 March.
Mr Langbroek said this provides flexibility for schools and their communities.
In the announcement made on Sunday 9 March, Mr Langbroek said the decision will apply to the then current 661 State schools, 183 Catholic schools, and 205 Independent schools in South East Queensland closed due to Tropical Cyclone Alfred, and any future schools impacted by this event.
He said schools will communicate directly with their communities to outline their decision concerning NAPLAN.
This decision was made in consultation with the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority and the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority.
Unaffected Queensland schools will continue their preparations as normal and commence the annual NAPLAN assessments on 12 March, as scheduled, with almost 1.3 million students expected to take the tests in more than 9,400 schools and campuses across Australia.
NAPLAN is the only national assessment that helps teachers, parents and carers see how students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are progressing in literacy and numeracy over time.
This year, students in Years 5, 7 and 9 will complete a second NAPLAN cycle since the annual test changed from being held in March instead of May and the introduction of the new proficiency levels. While proficiency levels become more demanding as students move through the NAPLAN years, this new data will give the opportunity to see how this cohort of students have progressed between 2023 and 2025.
Schools and education authorities will again receive preliminary school and student results from the assessments early in Term 2, around 4 weeks after the test period ends on 24 March 2025. This means teachers will have more time to review the results to inform their teaching and learning programs in the current school year.
“This year, you will be able to compare how the same cohort of students have progressed in their NAPLAN assessment results since 2023 when the annual test changed from being held in March instead of May and set against the new proficiency levels,” ACARA CEO, Mr Stephen Gniel, said.
“This will help education authorities, schools, parents and carers to see how Australian children are reaching important literacy and numeracy goals and are progressing against national standards.
“NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance, but it can provide important additional information about a student’s educational progress.”
Mr Gniel explained that NAPLAN is a large-scale operation with more than 4.4 million tests expected to be taken this year. ACARA has developed more than 2,500 different test questions which will assess how Australian students are performing in reading, writing, grammar and punctuation, spelling, and numeracy.
ACARA has been working closely with the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) and the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) over the past week to support schools impacted by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred in Queensland and northern NSW. The safety and wellbeing of students, teachers and school staff is the highest priority.
ACARA has tried and tested procedures in place to manage disruptions. Impacted schools in Queensland and northern NSW can delay the start of testing to Monday 17 March 2025.
“A big thank you to our fantastic teachers and schools across all jurisdictions and sectors for all their efforts to get ready for NAPLAN, especially in those areas impacted by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred. I would also like to thank parents and carers for supporting their child during the NAPLAN test period,” Mr Gniel said.
Preliminary results will be provided to schools in all domains except writing, which takes longer to mark. Schools will receive their full results, including writing, from June 2025, after which parents and carers receive their child’s Individual Student Report at the start of Term 3. ACARA is expecting to publish the National Results in late July/early August 2025.
For more information about NAPLAN, visit www.nap.edu.au/naplan.
More reading: Tropical Cyclone Alfred triggers school closures in QLD and NSW
