Set up more than a decade ago as part of Kevin Rudd's "education revolution", it's time that we take a good look, and examine some of those criticisms carefully.

Appropriately, the program is soon to undergo a major overhaul, and the ACT government has indicated its intention to play a major role in the planned review.

The program, designed to test the literacy and numeracy skills of schoolchildren across the country, could be well be drastically altered if the review finds it's failing to meet its stated aims.

As a concept, the program aims are entirely practical - to assess students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 on "the types of skills that are essential for every child to progress through school and life".

To this end, the tests cover skills in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy - essential indicators of the quality and rigour of any good education system.

The results, reflecting both student and school performance, are matched against other schools, states and developed countries, as a way of tracking progress and identifying gaps. But in the years since it was first introduced in 2008, the program has been criticised for its narrow scope and its potential for comparing schools.

Indeed, some critics have pointed out that the results have been used to pit schools against each other unnecessarily, while causing angst for teachers, students and parents alike.

It's a test no student can - or should - properly prepare for, and yet stories abound of schools putting aside crucial aspects of the usual curriculum to focus on getting its scores up. Many have pointed out that it promotes unhealthy competition and reduces schools' autonomy.

The terms of reference for the review - led by emeritus professor Barry McGaw, professor Claire Wyatt-Smith and emeritus professor William Louden - were released on Wednesday.

They include defining the objectives of standardised testing; improving support for individual student growth and school improvement; and improving information for parents on school and student performance. It will also examine how online testing can be improved, following internet connection problems this year that disrupted tens of thousands of students who were forced to resit parts of the test.

ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry says the ACT government will play an active role in the review, and she would like to see NAPLAN change to provide a more comprehensive overview of a child's learning.

"NAPLAN itself is a very narrow focus on a couple of different indicators," Ms Berry said.

"While it does provide some assessment of a student at a point of time on those particular things, more comprehensive data across a whole child's learning from the start to the end of the year would be more beneficial to the student, for their parents and for the teachers as well."

Although standardised testing of students on literacy and numeracy will always be useful, we must ensure that we are doing it in a way that helps raise education standards. Pitting schools and students against each other - especially in a small jurisdiction like ours - will never be a useful pursuit.