Consultation has taken place on successive drafts of the benchmarks. The Ministerial agreement on a national literacy and numeracy goal and the development of related benchmarks represent an historic agreement in Australia. They demonstrate the common intention across the nation to raise standards and to report on student achievement in comparable ways. This document is the first effort to translate that common intention into a practical form. The benchmarks articulate nationally agreed minimum acceptable standards for literacy at years 3 and 5.
Benchmarks are deliberately brief and simply expressed.
They are summaries of student achievement written so as to be understood by most people in the community. Similar work from overseas has also been used. Benchmarks will enable State and Territory reporting of aggregated student achievement data against common standards to the Australian community through the National Report on Schooling . Data will be reported in relation to the achievement or non-achievement of the minimum acceptable standard for year 3 and year 5. Information to enable reporting against benchmarks will be gathered by rigorous, State-based procedures applying to all students.