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As students flooded out of classrooms and into playgrounds across the country on Tuesday after completing the written component of the NAPLAN exams, two words seemed to sum the exams up from Newcastle to Strathfield: "easy-peasy".
It is a complete turnaround from the withering criticism that NAPLAN suffered last year when hundreds of students did not attempt a persuasive writing question that was criticised by many for being too hard, forcing the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority to adopt separate questions for the year 3 and 5, and 7 and 9 cohorts.
While students at schools from the Kimberley to Killara gossip about what they did and didn't do, those outside the canteen queue waiting to find out what the writing question was this year will have to wait until next Friday, when the grace period for the national test finishes.
However, media embargos do little to dent the spirits of playground critics.
"They should have made it way more challenging", said year 5 Strathfield South student Joycelyn Soo as she and six friends burst out of the classroom and onto the hopscotch court.
All the preparation served them well said their teacher Richie Kim.
Despite repeated warnings from educators that private tutoring was not necessary for NAPLAN, he said some students were taking five sessions a week with private tutoring colleges.
Watch: How can you best prepare your child for NAPLAN?
Ashwin Rajeswaran sat his first exam on Tuesday. "That was super easy, it was basically like a revision of year 2 work; it's all basic skills," he said.
Moments after putting the pencil down on his paper the eight-year-old already had one eye on the future, to a set of exams three years away that suddenly seem just around the corner.
"The environment helps you get used to test conditions and the atmosphere that we will have for the scholarship and selective tests, which I'm still a bit scared about," he said.
Geram Dunlop, a year 9 student at the Bishop Tyrrell Anglican School in Newcastle is at the other end of the scale. This year is the last time he will sit a NAPLAN exam.
"The language conventions were a bit tough, but the rest was fine," he said.
His fellow Novocastrian, year 7 student Georgia Stewardson found the opposite. She said the writing topic was a lot broader than she expected but the test was pretty easy overall.
Geram and Georgia might be almost out of NAPLAN's grasp, but testing continues on Wednesday and Thursday.
"We are really looking forward to reading and to maths," said Georgia.
While students at Strathfield South and Bishop Tyrrell appear to have come away from the tests stress-free, ACARA chief executive officer Robert Randall said parents and teachers should put NAPLAN into context for their children.
"NAPLAN's purpose is to identify, as early as possible, a child's strengths and areas for development, to make sure they are progressing in literacy and numeracy," Mr Randall said. "NAPLAN isn't high-stakes testing; it amounts to less than four hours, four times in a student's life over seven years of schooling."
Are you smarter than a NAPLAN student? Test your knowledge with questions taken from the year 3, 5, 7 and 9 exams due to be sat by more than 1 million students around the country this week.
