The Illawarra Mercury has revealed a group of year 9 students at Oak Flats did not receive the full NAPLAN test results due to a teacher error.

The teacher failed the NAPLAN protocols by allowing the students to take a break during the numeracy assessment.

The results were considered null and void.

If you didn’t know, NAPLAN stands for National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy.

It was designed to do exactly what the name suggests.

NAPLAN was introduced to give an accurate reading of the levels of numeracy and literacy in students and schools.

Before NAPLAN was brought to life, the testing of the literary and numeracy levels in students was done by states or jurisdictions individually.

Introduced in 2008 under then Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard, NAPLAN was aimed at giving us all a picture of where students and particular schools sat in terms of the basics. It provided a national benchmark.

Speaking at a conference earlier this year in Dubai, Ms Gillard argued NAPLAN has enabled old perceptions to be broken or eroded. 

"Many people, before they had this information, would have said to themselves ‘private equals good, and public equals bad’," Ms Gillard said. That is certainly true.

Clearly NAPLAN has shown there is no system which holds the golden egg to providing the perfect answer to a child’s education.

Yet a decade on, the critics of NAPLAN argue the testing has done little to improve the overall rates of literacy and numeracy within our schools. 

Many of the state education ministers and teaching groups are among the critics.

A look at NSW overall shows there has been no real gains largely across the board in the testing and, in many cases, some areas have gone backwards.

So the question is rightfully being asked, is the program achieving what it was designed to achieve or has it failed?