Only 10 per cent of the nation will move online in 2017. This includes most ACT schools, along with around half in South Australia and 100 in each of the remaining states. All schools nationwide will be required to be online by 2019.

Dr Stanley Rabinowitz, general manager, assessment and reporting, of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), who administer the tests, said rigorous trials over the past three years have proven that no student will be disadvantaged.

"We're working very hard to make sure the online and paper exams are comparable," Dr Rabinowitz said.

"Individual students might differ because they have different readiness, different motivations, some might actually do better online, some may do a little better on paper but overall the test is being built so there will be no differences at the school level, at the state or territory level, or at the national level for a school that goes online or a school that sits the traditional paper test."

The online test is an adaptive test so it is possible that no student in the same cohort might sit the exact same exam. All students will be given a set of "locator" questions which determine what level the student is at and then questions branch out from there.

"What that does is two very important things," Dr Rabinowitz said.

"One it keeps you motivated, you're not getting items too hard or too easy for you, and second because every item now is measuring closer to your real ability level we get greater precision in the final results.

"It's a real win win situation for kids taking the test online."

But concerns about the transition still exist. Principals in South Australia are worried that students from wealthier backgrounds who have greater access to technology will benefit. NSW, the Northern Territory and Tasmania have declared they will not take part in any of the 2017 pilot exams over concerns some schools lack the necessary IT infrastructure to properly conduct the tests online.

An ACT Education Directorate spokesperson said the ACT was progressing well toward its move to NAPLAN Online.

"Over 100 schools across Canberra participated in a trial of the NAPLAN online system during August 2016 as part of its preparation to move NAPLAN Online from 2017," the spokesperson said.

"This testing was successful and provided valuable feedback about our readiness for the online platform."

A demonstration site has been set up for schools and students to continue their familiarisation activities in all NAPLAN test domains. Access to the demonstration site is available at www.nap.edu.au

The full NAPLAN national report was released on Tuesday, confirming the summary report released in August, which showed flatlined results from the previous national test of the literacy and numeracy knowledge of all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

Further analysis by the ACARA statisticians improved things slightly for the ACT. In the summary report the ACT topped only 14 out of 20 domains. The new data has the ACT topping 18 out of 20 domains.

Minister for Education Yvette Berry said the NAPLAN 2016 National Report confirmed the ACT's strong position nationally.

"It shows that Canberra school students have continued to perform well in national comparisons, achieving the highest or equal highest national ranking in 18 of 20 areas tested," Ms Berry said.

Ms Berry said she would look closely at the NAPLAN, PISA and TIMSS results and see where they could guide future improvements in the ACT's education system.

"It's also important to keep in mind the many other factors which go into school and student success – fundamentals such as feeling safe at home and school, access to facilities, physical and mental health – as we look at our NAPLAN performance."

She said one of the areas of particular note in the full report were the gains from year 3 to year 5 and year 7 to year 9 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students which were greater than those for non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in reading and numeracy for the 2014 to 2016 cohort.

"It's important that we use this information, alongside the information gained from our specific Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs to continue to support these students," Ms Berry said.

Robert Randall, chief executive of ACARA, said one of the primary concerns from the full report were the plateauing results.

"There have been improvements in many schools across the country and some improvement in some states and territories. However, at a national level NAPLAN results have shown no significant improvement across the domains and year levels in the last few years. We should expect more for our children," Mr Randall said.

Girls on average continued to perform more strongly in the literacy tests while boys performed more strongly in the numeracy test, although there was substantial overlap.

In one bright spot, indigenous students have chalked up gains since 2008, including in reading (Years 3 and 5), numeracy (Year 5), spelling (Year 3), grammar and punctuation (Years 3, 5 and 7), Mr Randall said.

Western Australia and Queensland also posted significant gains, though the ACT, NSW and Victoria continue to have the highest mean scores across the NAPLAN domains in Years 3, 5 and 7.

The data also revealed 47 test incidents in 2016, of which two were cheating, 16 were a security breach and 29 were a "general breach", in numbers similar to previous years and according to ACARA, too small to have any impact on the overall results.

There were three test incidents reported in the ACT, all deemed to have had no impact.

With Kelsey Munro