NAPLAN testing could be disrupted by COVID-19 absences this year, as critics warn of the enduring limitations of the national testing program.
From Tuesday, 1.2 million students across more than 9500 schools will be taking the literacy and numeracy tests online.
This year is the first year that all schools will be doing the online tests, and the last year that the tests will be held in May.
From 2023, the test will be held in March to enable teachers to get the results earlier in the year.
ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry said she had made her frustrations with the testing program clear over the years.
"NAPLAN is a narrow-point-in-time assessment that provides limited information about only a few subjects among all the learning happening in schools," she said.
"While there is some value in having a nationally consistent measure of student progress, there are things that we can do to improve on NAPLAN as it is currently delivered."
University of Canberra associate dean of education Duncan Driver said NAPLAN data was used by teachers to plan support programs and by parents to research schools.
However, it could also encourage schools to view each other as competitors rather than colleagues, he said, and place stress and anxiety on students.
"There can be a toxic effect on teacher and school morale based on having those results reported through the My School website," he said.
"It's not necessarily the teacher or the school's fault if one school performs less impressively than another school. There are lots of factors at play that need to take into account the socio-economic status of a catchment area."
Dr Driver said the test could be improved by allowing schools to opt in to the program and to adapt the assessment to their context.
"I remember one example of students being asked to write a story about a day at the beach," he said.
"And that would seem on the face of it to be quite an innocuous prompt for writing - but you need to remember that some students, say in parts of Sydney or the Central Coast, would have had a great deal of experience of days at the beach, but other students in places like Tennant Creek or Alice Springs may have had no experience of a day at the beach."
Australian Parents Council president Jenni Rickard said NAPLAN was an essential part of the education system.
"NAPLAN is the litmus test on how our education system is going as a whole," Ms Rickard said.
"We have an education system that should be built on equity, and if we're not testing how equitable the education system is, then we're not doing enough."
Ms Rickard said the results were very easy for parents to understand.
"We've now got 10 years' worth of data for NAPLAN. We should really, really be able to put together policies that address that trending data and how that's changing," she said.
Students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 will complete tests for writing, reading, conventions of language and numeracy on a computer, with the exception of year 3 writing, which is done on paper.
Students did not complete the assessments in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2021 results did not show any significant detriment when it came to students' achievement.
