The national literacy and numeracy testing program begins on Wednesday, 13 March, with 1.3 million students around the country expected to participate.

Schools will get their student and school preliminary results for all domains except writing early in term 2, about four weeks after the testing concludes.

This is eight weeks earlier than 2023 and a term earlier than in 2022.

The earlier timeframe for testing and results addresses a major criticism of the program: that the results were delivered so far into the school year to make them not useful for teachers.

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority acting chief executive Stephen Gniel said providing earlier results to schools supported teachers to help every student reach their potential.

"NAPLAN is invaluable as a national assessment that allows us to see whether young Australians are developing critical literacy and numeracy skills for learning, using a national, objective scale," Mr Gniel said.

"Getting the results to schools sooner is a key benefit of having moved the assessment from May to March last year, as well as delivering the tests fully online.

"It will help support schools in understanding where their students have performed well and areas for improvement, as well as shape teaching and learning programs."

The preliminary results will include reading, conventions of language and numeracy, but not writing, which takes more time to mark.

Schools will receive the full results from June while parents and carers can expect their child's individual student report at the start of term 3.

The testing was brought forward in the year and the format of results changed from bands to four achievement categories following a breakaway 2020 review recommended changes to the program.

Student results are now classified as exceeding, strong, developing and needs additional support.

The NAPLAN tests have been delivered fully online since 2022.

The program was suspended in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic, creating a gap in the data.

The formula used to calculate socio-educational advantage in the ACT is currently under review due to apparent anomalies in the the highly-advantaged jurisdiction.

Disadvantaged students in the ACT fell further behind their more advantaged peers in NAPLAN in 2022, prompting an independent review into literacy and numeracy.