Scott Robertson (diver)
Scott Robertson is a former Australian Springboard and Platform diver. Scott began diving at Whitehorse Diving Club in Melbourne back in 1993, his coach Doug Walton coached him through to an international level before Scott relocated to Brisbane in 2004 to take up a scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport. In 2004 he and synchro partner Matthew Mitcham took out a Silver Medal at the World Junior Championships in Belem - Brazil before transitioning to the Senior National Team in 2005/2006. In 2006 he debuted in his first international senior team at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games in three events. Scott continued to compete in the 2006 FINA Grand Prix series at the Italian, German and American Grand Prix where he placed 2nd behind the Chinese. In 2007 Scott was named Australian Male Diver of the Year after taking three gold medals at the 2007 Open National Championships, he went on to Final at the 2007 FINA World Championships as well as finish in the top 10 in the 2007 International Grand Prix series.
In 2008 Scott was named back to back Australian Male Diver of the Year after taking a gold and two silvers at the Australian Open Championships. Scott went on to compete in the 2008 FINA World Cup as well as winning the Olympic Trials in the Men’s 3m synchronised with partner Robert Newbery. Scott went on to represent Australia at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, however was hampered in his preparation by a broken wrist he sustained while training for the 2008 FINA World Cup, he fractured his scaphoid bone during training from the 10m, which restricted his competitions to the 3m springboard events only. Scott went on to make the Finals at the Beijing Olympics finishing in 8th place. After the Olympic Games Scott underwent wrist surgery and was restricted to light training throughout the 2009 season. In 2010 he relocated to Sydney to the New South Wales Institute of Sport to train once again with 2008 Olympic Gold Medallist, Matthew Mitcham and coach Chava Sobrino. After over 12 months out of the National Team and two wrist operations, Scott managed to win two Gold medals and a Bronze medal at the 2010 Australian Open Championships.
Scott continued his form in the 2010 FINA Grand Prix series winning a Bronze at the Canadian Grand Prix and finishing with a world ranking of #2 in World Standings. Scott competed at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games winning a Bronze medal. While preparing for the 2012 London Olympics Scott sustained a shoulder injury and was forced into retirement after undergoing a shoulder reconstruction in early 2012. Scott continues to coach and is an active board member of Diving NSW
Queensland Music Festival
The Queensland Music Festival is a series of musical events staged in a number of locations in Queensland, Australia around late July, every second year. It is financially supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Brisbane City Council, the Australia Council, a wide range of other partners, it brings new innovative musical experiences to the far flung communities as well as major cities of Queensland. The festival began as the Brisbane Biennial Festival of Music in 1991 with Anthony Steel as founding artistic director who directed the 1993 festival. Nicholas Heyward served as CEO in 1995 and 1997 with Jonathan Mills and Richard Mills as artistic advisors. In 1999, the festival was renamed the Queensland Biennial Festival of Music and the program was extended to include regional Queensland; the artistic director was Simone de Haan in 1999, Lyndon Terracini from 2001 to 2005. He was succeeded in 2007 by Paul Grabowsky – when the festival was renamed to Queensland Music Festival – and Deborah Conway in 2009 and 2011.
James Morrison was artistic director for 2013 and 2015.. The current artistic director, Katie Noonan was appointed in 2016. List of Australian music festivals Queensland Music Festival
The Courier-Mail
The Courier-Mail is a daily tabloid newspaper published in Brisbane, Australia. Owned by News Corp Australia, it is published daily from Monday to Saturday in tabloid format, its editorial offices are located at Bowen Hills, in Brisbane's inner northern suburbs, it is printed at Murarrie, in Brisbane's eastern suburbs. It is available for purchase throughout Queensland, most regions of Northern New South Wales and parts of the Northern Territory; the history of The Courier-Mail is through four mastheads. The Moreton Bay Courier became The Courier the Brisbane Courier and since 1933 The Courier-Mail; the Moreton Bay Courier was established as a weekly paper in June 1846. Issue frequency increased to bi-weekly in January 1858, tri-weekly in December 1859 daily under the editorship of Theophilus Parsons Pugh from 14 May 1861; the recognised founder and first editor was Arthur Sidney Lyon, assisted by its printer, James Swan, the mayor of Brisbane and member of Queensland Legislative Council. Lyon referred to as the "father of the Press" in the colony of Queensland, had served as a writer and journalist in Melbourne, moved on to found and edit journals such as Moreton Bay Free Press, North Australian and Darling Downs Gazette.
Lyon was encouraged to emigrate by Rev. Dr. John Dunmore Lang and arrived in Brisbane from Sydney in early 1846 to establish a newspaper, he persuaded a printer of Lang's Sydney newspaper The Colonialist to join him. Lyon and Swan established themselves on the corner of Queen Street and Albert Street, Brisbane, in a garret of a building known as the North Star Hotel; the first issue of the Moreton Bay Courier, consisting of 4 pages, appeared weekly on Saturday 20 June 1846, with Lyon as editor and Swan as publisher. After some 18 months and Swan disagreed on many aspects of editorial policy, including transportation of convicts and squatting. Lyon took over sole control in late 1847, but had money problems, gave sole control to Swan. Swan sold out to Thomas Blacket Stephens in about November 1859; the Moreton Bay Courier became The Courier, the Brisbane Courier in 1864. In June–July 1868, Stephens floated a new company, transferred the plant and copyright of the Brisbane Courier to "The Brisbane Newspaper Company".
He was the managing director. The Journal was, from November 1873 to December 1880, managed by one of the new part owners, the Tasmanian-born former public servant Gresley Lukin. Although called'managing editor', actual writing and editing was by William Augustine O'Carroll. Most prominent of the various editors and sub-editors of the Queenslander'literary staff' were William Henry Traill NSW politician and editor of the famed Sydney journal'The Bulletin', Carl Adolph Feilberg, Danish born but from the age of six educated in England and in France. Carl Feilberg followed William Henry Trail in the role of political commentator and the de facto editor of the Queenslander to January 1881, he succeeded William O'Carroll as Courier editor-in-chief from September 1883 to his death in October 1887. Lukin's roles as part owner-editor changed on 21 December 1880. Charles Hardie Buzacott, former'Postmaster General' in the first McIlwraith government, had been a staff journalist. John James Knight was editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Courier 1906–16 managing director chairman of all the company's publications.
The first edition of The Courier-Mail was published on 28 August 1933, after Keith Murdoch's Herald and Weekly Times acquired and merged the Brisbane Courier and the Daily Mail. In 1987, Rupert Murdoch's News Limited acquired newspaper control, outstanding shares of Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd; the Courier-Mail was inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in 2015. The Courier-Mail is a right leaning newspaper with four editorial endorsements for the coalition to one for Labor in the period 1996–2007; the Courier-Mail supports free market economic policies and the process of globalisation. It supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq; the Courier-Mail has the fourth-highest circulation of any daily newspaper in Australia. Its average Monday-Friday net paid print sales were 172,801 between January and March 2013, having fallen 8.0 per cent compared to the previous year. Its average Saturday net paid print sales were 228,650 between January and March 2013, down 10.5 per cent compared to the previous year.
The paper's Monday-Friday readership was 488,000 in March 2013, having fallen 11.6 per cent compared to the previous year. Its Saturday readership was 616,000 in March 2013, down 13.8 per cent compared to the previous year. Around three-quarters of the paper's readership is located in the Brisbane metropolitan area. Although claimed to be Brisbane's only daily newspaper since the demise of Queensland Newspapers' own afternoon newspaper The Telegraph in 1988, it arguably has had two competitors since 2007. News Corp itself published mX, a free afternoon newspaper, since 2007, but mX had a low news content, was discontinued in mid 2015. Fairfax Media has published the online Brisbane Times since 2007. According to third-party web analytics providers Alexa and SimilarWeb, Courier-Mail's website is the 141st and 273rd most visited in Australia as of August 2015. SimilarWeb rates the site as the 25th most visited news website in Australia, attracting 2.6 million visitors per month. Prominent journalists and columnists include Mike O'Connor.
Its current Editor is Lachlan Heywood. Its editorial cartoonist is Sean Leahy, its National Political Corresp
U Thant
Thant, known honorifically as U Thant, was a Burmese diplomat and the third Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971, the first non-European to hold the position. He held the office for one month. A native of Pantanaw, Thant was educated at the Rangoon University. In the days of tense political climate in Burma, he held moderate views positioning himself between fervent nationalists and British loyalists, he was a close friend of Burma's first Prime Minister U Nu and served various positions in Nu's cabinet from 1948 to 1961. Thant had a unassuming demeanor which won his colleagues' respect, he was appointed as Secretary-General in 1961, when his predecessor, Dag Hammarskjöld, died in an air crash. In his first term, Thant facilitated negotiations between U. S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, helping to avert a global catastrophe. In December 1962, Thant ordered Operation Grandslam, which ended a secessionist insurgency in Congo.
He was reappointed as Secretary-General on 2 December 1966 by a unanimous vote of the Security Council. In his second term, Thant was well known for publicly criticizing American conduct in the Vietnam War, he oversaw the entry of several newly independent African and Asian states into the UN. Thant refused to serve a third term and retired in 1971. Thant died of lung cancer in 1974. A devout Buddhist and the foremost Burmese diplomat on the international stage, Thant was admired and held in great respect by the Burmese populace; when the military government refused him any honours, riots broke out in Rangoon, but they were violently crushed by the government, leaving scores of casualties. Thant, the eldest of four sons, was born in Pantanaw, colonial Burma, to a moderately wealthy family of landowners and rice merchants. Educated in Calcutta, Thant's father Po Hnit was the only person in the town who could communicate well in English, he was a founding member of the Burma Research Society and had helped establish The Sun newspaper in Rangoon.
Although his family members were ethnic Bamars and devout Buddhists, Thant's father, according to Thant Myint-U, had distant ancestors who were "people from both India and China and Muslims, as well as Shans and Mons". He hoped, his other sons, Khant and Tin Maung went on to become politicians and scholars. Po Hnit had collected a personal library of various American and British books and cultivated a reading habit among his children; as a result, Thant became an avid reader and his school friends nicknamed him "The Philosopher". Apart from reading, he enjoyed various sports including hiking and playing chinlone, he went to the National High School in Pantanaw. At the age of eleven, Thant participated in strikes against the University Act of 1920, he dreamed of becoming a journalist and surprised the family by writing an article for the Union of Burma Boy Scouts magazine. When Thant was fourteen, his father died and a series of inheritance disputes forced Thant's mother, Nan Thaung, her four children into difficult financial times.
After the death of his father, Thant believed he would not be able to complete a four-year degree and instead worked for a two-year teaching certificate at Rangoon University in 1926. As the oldest son, he had to fulfill his filial responsibilities of the family. At university, together with Nu, the future Prime Minister of Burma, studied history under D. G. E. Hall. Nu was told by a distant mutual relative to take care of Thant and the two soon became close friends. Thant was elected joint secretary of the University Philosophical Association and secretary of the Literary and Debating Society. In Rangoon, Thant met J. S. Furnivall, the founder of The Burma Book Club and The World of Books magazine, in which Thant contributed. Promising a good post, Furnivall urged Thant to complete four-year university course and join Civil Service but Thant refused. After earning the certificate, he returned to Pantanaw to teach at the National High School as a senior teacher in 1928, he contacted Furnivall and Nu writing articles and participating in The World of Books translation competitions.
In 1931, Thant won first place in All Burma Teachership Examination and became the school's headmaster by the age of twenty-five. Urged by Thant, his friend Nu took the local superintendent of schools position. Thant contributed to several newspapers and magazines under the pen name "Thilawa" and translated a number of books, including one on the League of Nations, his major influences were Sun Yat-sen and Mahatma Gandhi. In the days of tense political climate in Burma, Thant stood moderate grounds between fervent nationalists and British loyalists. During the World War II, the Japanese occupied Burma from 1942 to 1945, they brought Thant to Rangoon to lead the Educational Reorganizing Committee. However, Thant returned to Pantanaw; when the Japanese ordered making Japanese compulsory in Pantanaw high schools, Thant defied the orders and cooperated with the growing anti-Japanese resistance. In 1948, Burma gained independence from the United Kingdom. Nu became the prime minister of the newly independent Burma and appointed Thant as director of broadcasting in 1948.
By civil war had broken out. The Karen insurgency began and Thant risked his life to go to Karen camps to negotiate for peace; the negotiations broke down, in 1949 the advancing insurgents burned his hometown, including hi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian activist, the leader of the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world; the honorific Mahātmā was applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa – is now used worldwide. In India, he was called Bapu, a term that he preferred and Gandhi ji, is known as the Father of the Nation. Born and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat and trained in law at the Inner Temple, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for various social causes and for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi led Indians in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km Dandi Salt March in 1930, in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India, he lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn hand-spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, undertook long fasts as a means of both self-purification and political protest. Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism, demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan; as many displaced Hindus and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out in the Punjab and Bengal. Eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace.
In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to stop religious violence. The last of these, undertaken on 12 January 1948 when he was 78 had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan; some Indians thought. Among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest. Captured along with many of his co-conspirators and collaborators and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte were tried and executed while many of their other accomplices were given prison sentences. Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 into a Gujarati Hindu Modh Baniya family in Porbandar, a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula and part of the small princely state of Porbandar in the Kathiawar Agency of the Indian Empire, his father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi, served as the diwan of Porbandar state.
Although he only had an elementary education and had been a clerk in the state administration, Karamchand proved a capable chief minister. During his tenure, Karamchand married four times, his first two wives died young, after each had given birth to a daughter, his third marriage was childless. In 1857, Karamchand sought his third wife's permission to remarry. Karamchand and Putlibai had three children over the ensuing decade: Laxmidas. On 2 October 1869, Putlibai gave birth to her last child, Mohandas, in a dark, windowless ground-floor room of the Gandhi family residence in Porbandar city; as a child, Gandhi was described by his sister Raliat as "restless as mercury, either playing or roaming about. One of his favourite pastimes was twisting dogs' ears." The Indian classics the stories of Shravana and king Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his autobiography, he admits, he writes: "It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number."
Gandhi's early self-identification with truth and love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters. The family's religious background was eclectic. Gandhi's father Karamchand was Hindu and his mother Putlibai was from a Pranami Vaishnava Hindu family. Gandhi's father was of Modh Baniya caste in the varna of Vaishya, his mother came from the medieval Krishna bhakti-based Pranami tradition, whose religious texts include the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, a collection of 14 texts with teachings that the tradition believes to include the essence of the Vedas, the Quran and the Bible. Gandhi was influenced by his mother, an pious lady who "would not think of taking her meals without her daily prayers...she would take the hardest vows and keep them without flinching. To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her."In 1874, Gandhi's father Karamchand left Porbandar for the smaller state of Rajkot, where he became a counsellor to its ruler, the Thakur Sahib.
Anglican Church Grammar School
The Anglican Church Grammar School the Church of England Grammar School and referred to as Churchie, is an independent, Anglican and boarding school for boys, located in East Brisbane, an inner suburb of Brisbane, Australia. Founded in 1912 by Canon William Perry French Morris, Churchie has a non-selective enrolment policy and caters for 1,800 students from Reception to Year 12, including 150 boarders from Years 7 to 12, it is owned by the Corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane. Churchie is a founding member of the Great Public Schools Association of Queensland, is affiliated with the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia, the Independent Primary School Heads of Australia, Independent Schools Queensland, the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the Australian Boarding Schools' Association. Churchie is an International Baccalaureate World School offering the Diploma Programme and Primary Years Programme. Churchie recognised as one of Brisbane's most prestigious schools, is among Australia's richest based on earnings and donations from alumni.
In 2009, the school raised $30.9 million in fees, parent contributions and other private sources, 26.5 per cent more than any other school in southeast Queensland. In the same year, Churchie received $7.7 million in donations from alumni. This figure was the second highest in Australia, surpassed only by the donations to Sydney Grammar School. In 1912, Canon William Perry French Morris and his wife founded a school called St Magnus Hall at Ardencraig, a suburban house in Church Street, before relocating it to the present site in East Brisbane in 1918. Canon Morris assigned Saint Magnus, a Norsemen earl, as the patron saint of the school and had hoped that the students would be referred to as'Magnates', it is said that he did not like the nickname'Churchie' at first, however when it had become commonplace by the 1930s and respected around Queensland he accepted the change. The school's name was changed to St Magnus Hall Collegiate School For Boys and to The Cathedral School early in 1913 following the move to a new site at St John's Cathedral in the Brisbane central business district.
Thirty-three boys completed the school year that year. In 1916, the land that the school stands on was purchased and, in 1918, the foundation stone was laid on the school's current site. From 1916 to 1985, the school was known as the Church of England Grammar School. Prior to the 1985 school year, the school name was changed once again to the Anglican Church Grammar School, in order to reflect the 1981 renaming of the Church of England in Australia to the Anglican Church of Australia. However, the school continues to be popularly known as Churchie. In May 2004, Frederick Roy Hoskins, a former teacher and boarding house head, pleaded guilty to sixteen child sex offences committed against seven victims aged nine to fifteen between 1947 and 1955, he had taught at the school for forty years. On the afternoon of 7 December 2007, a fire started in the Lanskey Building between two Year 7 classrooms; the automated fire system set alarms off, just after 4:30 pm the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service arrived to find two classrooms badly damaged.
During April 2008, there was community debate when students were disallowed from inviting male partners to the school formal. The school's Headmaster referred the matter to the School Council, which released a statement saying that it'strongly supported the headmaster's position on the school's education programs in social settings'. In October 2009, the deputy head of the preparatory school, Chris Klemm, was stood down due to'serious allegations' made against him; the Headmaster issued letters to all parents regarding the matter, but kept the allegation, revealed in the mid-semester holiday break, confidential. In November 2010, Klemm was convicted of child sex offences and received a jail sentence of five years. In late 2009, the school began extensive construction work to upgrade its cultural and sporting facilities. Over two years, three new complexes were built at the school's East Brisbane campus: the Barry McCart Aquatic Centre, the David Turbayne Tennis Centre and the $9.9 million Sir John Pidgeon Sports Complex, opened by Governor Penelope Wensley in 2010.
In 2011, Morris Hall, the school's "spiritual heart", was upgraded and expanded and the adjacent quadrangle, Magnus Quad, was relandscaped. Churchie celebrated its centenary in 2012. In October 2016, School House, the oldest building on site and home to the boarding community, was refurbished; the following year The Centenary Library was opened and now houses Student Services, the Senior School library, classrooms and a research centre focusing on learning spaces and innovative learning environments. Canon Morris based much of the school's ethos on its patron saint, St Magnus, a Norsemen earl known for his strength of character and his qualities as an educated Christian man; the Viking tradition is reflected in the school coat of arms, with its shield and battle axes symbolising Viking courage, its crossed axes signifying self-sacrifice and St Magnus' martyrdom. Many of the school's rowing boats are named after Viking figures, the school mascot,'Eric', is a Viking effigy. Churchie's twenty-two hectare campus is located in inner-city Brisbane.
The school occupies the entire eastern side of Oaklands Parade, a street in East Brisbane, extends all the way down to the banks of Norman Creek, a tributary of the Brisbane River. The first building on the site was the old boarding house, erected in 1918. Most of the school's buildings
National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy
The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy is a series of tests focused on basic skills that are administered annually to Australian students. These standardised tests assess students' reading, writing and numeracy and are administered by the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority; the National Assessment Program is overseen by the Council of Australian Governments Education Council. NAPLAN was introduced in 2008. ACARA has managed the tests from 2010 onwards; the tests are designed to determine. There has been a great deal of contention in the educational community as to whether the tests are appropriate, whether teachers are teaching as they would or teaching to the test, what the results of the test are being used for; the data obtained from the NAPLAN tests are collated and used to show all schools' average performance against other schools in the country on the Government My School website. The tests are designed to be carried out on the same days all across Australia in any given year.
Parents are able to decide. The vast majority of Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students participate. Although for year three students, they have to pass with a 70% mark in order to go through to Year 4; this is to prepare young children towards competitive examinations. Prior to the introduction of NAPLAN the testing of literacy and numeracy was done individually by each jurisdiction. According to New South Wales Public Schools the NAPLAN tests, which commenced in 2008, were instigated after the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment and Youth Affairs 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"; 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 and numeracy skills for their particular year level. The emergence of a national schooling system in Australia is part of a shift towards making educational policy part of national economic policy in response to globalization.
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 and Youth Affairs influence brought about a series of tests to determine whether students being prepared for life appropriately in the present day school system; the introduction of national literacy and numeracy tests in 2008 has provided consistency and transferability of information on students’ literacy and numeracy performance nationally. The primary stakeholders are students and teachers. According to a Parent's Brochure the NAPLAN test results will be used to assist students and parents in discussing student progress with teachers, identifying students who require "greater challenges or additional support", identifying teaching program strengths and weaknesses and allow for school program review and support".
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 and creative individuals and active and informed citizens. 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", 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. These purposes are considered during the NAPLAN development process"; the development of the test includes input from indigenous experts from around the country to ensure the tests are designed to be inclusive of all students. Intense community pressure on school performance has led to the growth of a test preparation industry.
Each test contains between 40 questions. Most students complete the tests by using a paper. In Victoria, Pearson Australia has been responsible for collecting NAPLAN data and marking some tests. In Queensland the printing and distribution of tests, data collection and some marking is undertaken by Fuji Xerox Document Management Solutions which processes tests from South Australia. In 2016, some schools trialled online testing. In 2018 around 200,000 students sat online versions of the tests, it had been claimed that results from both styles of test would be able to be compared, but doubts about that claim led to a delay in the release of preliminary results on the scheduled date of 8 August. Concern was expressed about delays in announcing results reducing their usefulness; the tests are not a high stakes event in a student's education. It is a snapshot of a student's current abilities; the tests do not measure higher-order thinking skills or creativity. NAPLAN is a tool intended to be used for school improvement.
Data from NAPLAN is modelled according to the item response theory. This allows for comparisons to be made between a process known as equating; the down side of NAPLAN can be seen when teachers are teaching to the test rather than teaching to the curriculum as can be seen in Victoria where according to Perkins teachers have been told to "teach explicitly for the national tests that are the cornerstone of
