The testing of all Australian students over three days next month could enable them to be ranked against a national average for literacy and numeracy for the first time.
The ACT will take the lead in pushing for the move at a historic meeting of Labor education ministers tomorrow.
Students will sit for literacy and numeracy tests between May 13-15 and under an agreement between the states, territories and Commonwealth, all students will sit for the same tests assessing numeracy, reading, writing, spelling, punctuation and grammar. Results are expected at the end of August.
The ACT has been the lead jurisdiction in developing the national testing regime and ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr will steer debate in Melbourne this week on how results will be reported.
He will also present the proposed layout of the national reports and will ask the ministers to agree to national testing dates of May 12-14 for 2009.
The states and territories, before now, have been responsible for devising and marking their own literacy and numeracy tests.
The publication of results in terms of how schools could be directly compared has been a politically vexed issue.
The former Howard government was pushing for more open comparisons, or league tables ranking individual schools against each other, but this was resisted by the states and territories. Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard, however, said she believed parents should receive greater information on how their children were faring.
Mr Barr will chair negotiations on possible state and territory comparisons, averages and whether each student's results will be ranked nationally.
The tests to be administered across years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have been developed over the past 18 months under the leadership of the Curriculum Corporation, which has consulted government and non-government school sectors.
Mr Barr said the tests would "foremost provide diagnostic information to assist in identifying student strengths and weaknesses".
Whether national comparisons would lead to some form of state and territory ranking and how results would be reported to students was yet to be determined.
Historically, ACT students have topped national rankings in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Programme for International Student Assessment.
Mr Barr said it was too early to tell if a national ranking system would prompt some of the lower-ranked states or territories to ask the Commonwealth for more funding for literacy and numeracy.
ACT Department of Education and Training chief executive Michele Bruniges said, "Because it is the first meeting of all of the education ministers, we believe it will provide a window into Commonwealth expectations in education ... Literacy and numeracy results have always been aimed at identifying those students who are most in need of assistance."
At the Ministerial Council, ministers are expected to discuss support for leadership in schools, teacher professional learning and raising the status of the teaching profession, as well as progress being made towards a national curriculum.
Mr Barr has been asked to propose the ACT's physical activity in schools policy "Get a Move on" to his counterparts.
The program, which aims to tackle obesity by offering students free sporting equipment if they undertake exercise, is due for implementation across ACT schools next year and will include a 10-week physical education challenge.
Mr Barr took the program to the last meeting of Sports Ministers, who asked that it be taken to Education Ministers.
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