Schools across Australia have been told they can resume Naplan testing more than an hour after being told to “pause” the digital assessment, causing disruption among the 1.4 million students undertaking it.

The issue, which came on the first day of the nationwide literacy and numeracy tests for years 3, 5, 7 and 9, prevented some pupils from logging into the online platform, with one education expert dubbing it a “really unfortunate mess”.

In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (Acara) said the issue had been resolved and apologised to schools and students.

“Naplan testing has now resumed following a widespread issue earlier this morning, which affected students being able to log on to the online platform to complete their assessments,” it said.

“We apologise for the disruption to students and schools ... We continue to monitor the platform to ensure students are able to complete their assessments without further issues.”

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Earlier, Acara said testing had been paused while an issue was “urgently investigated” by its technology provider, Education Services Australia, leading to backlash from parents and carers online.

Acara said schools were being provided with support and advice to minimise impacts on students.

Naplan 2026 dubbed a ‘mess’ and a ‘stuff up’

Late on Wednesday morning, schools posted to social media advising parents and carers that the tests would be delayed as a result of the outages. Some tests were unaffected while others were pushed back to Thursday depending on access to the digital platform.

Erskine Park high school in western Sydney said on Facebook: “Due to technical issues with the Naplan online server, a number of schools, including ours, were unable to access Naplan today. An updated timeline will be shared.”

Rooty Hill public school in western Sydney said it would postpone Naplan assessments due to the “statewide” issues, while Sydney’s International Grammar School said it had received guidance from Acara that writing tests for years 3 and 5 would “resume tomorrow”.

Associate Prof in learning analytics at Adelaide University, Vitomir Kovanovic, said the situation had been a “really unfortunate mess”.

“It’s a very tricky system to test in advance … and there’s no going back if you mess up like this,” he said. “Even if you give [students] another test, it will always look unfair if one student could log in and one couldn’t.”

Victoria’s shadow education minister, Brad Rowsell, said a “legitimate question” must be asked about the reliability of this year’s Naplan dataset given the “stuff up”.

Server error thought to be issue

Before the tests began, parents were sent a 35-page guide to installing a locked-down browser for assessments, which prevents students from using other applications or websites during testing.

The document said the browser would be installed by the school technical support officer. But students with their own devices would need help to set up their device for assessments.

According to reports on social media, an error reading “communication to the server has been lost” was displayed on the screens of students during tests.

About 1.4 million students are expected to complete this year’s Naplan tests, which transitioned to fully online in 2022 after trials away from paper began in 2016.

Year 3 writing tests are still completed on paper.

In 2019 Naplan test computer glitches prompted the Victorian government to allow schools to return to pen-and-paper assessments.

Prof of political education at the University of Sydney, Murray Print, said reverting to paper testing may not ensure a smoother evaluation.

“Naplan is a census assessment, so there are literally tens of thousands of students who are participating in this,” he said.

“If we were to revert to pencil and paper, it would take an inordinate amount of time in order to get the data back and teachers wouldn’t be able to use the information effectively by the time they received it.

“What this does suggest is we need a rigorous system and the organisations involved need to be well and truly resourced to do the job effectively.”

The shadow education minister, Julian Leeser, said he had written to his counterpart, Jason Clare, with 16 questions, including how he would ensure fairness for students whose test was interrupted compared with those who completed it normally.

“This … creates deep systemic problems,” he said. “This failure could skew the entire dataset.”