1. What is the rule for this pattern? 96, 48, 24, 12
March, every year
Free NAPLAN practice tests for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9
NAPLAN runs over two weeks in March each year. Schools sit Writing on the first day and choose their own days for the rest inside the window, with most going early — your school can tell you the exact days.
Meritly builds NAPLAN-style papers to the official specification — the real question count, the real time limit, the real spread of difficulty — and assembles a fresh one each time your child sits down.
Last updated: 17 October 2026
Free practice needs no account. Choose a year and a paper, hand the device to your child, and it's marked the moment they finish, with a worked solution on every question.
What's in the real test, and what we cover
- Numeracy. We cover: Yes.Automatically markable
- Reading. We cover: Yes.Passage sets with 5–8 questions each
- Conventions of Language. We cover: Yes.Spelling plus grammar and punctuation
- Writing. We cover: No.Marked by a human against a rubric
Paper structure by year level
Year 3
- Numeracy
- 36 q / 45 min
- Reading
- 39 q / 45 min
- Conventions
- 52 q / 45 min
Year 5
- Numeracy
- 42 q / 50 min
- Reading
- 39 q / 50 min
- Conventions
- 52 q / 45 min
Year 7
- Numeracy
- 48 q / 65 min
- Reading
- 48 q / 65 min
- Conventions
- 52 q / 45 min
Year 9
- Numeracy
- 48 q / 65 min
- Reading
- 48 q / 65 min
- Conventions
- 52 q / 45 min
Conventions is the same shape at every year level: 25 spelling items and 27 grammar and punctuation items. Calculators are not permitted at Years 3 and 5; at Years 7 and 9 the first section is non-calculator and the rest allows one. In our Numeracy papers the tools are on screen: a ruler at Year 5, and at Years 7 and 9 a ruler and protractor throughout, with the calculator from question 9. Once your child moves on to question 9, questions 1 to 8 can't be changed.
Which papers your child can sit shows in their account.
How our papers differ from the real thing
The real test is adaptive: it branches between testlets depending on how a student is going, so two children sitting the same test see different questions. Our papers cover the same content and difficulty spread in a single pass, without the branching.
In the real test, most spelling questions are dictated: each student hears a recording through headphones and types the missing word into a sentence on screen. Our Conventions of Language papers start with 25 spelling questions, 16 of them dictated with a recording to play, so have headphones ready; the spelling questions lock once your child moves on to grammar and punctuation.
NAPLAN online also asks children to do more than pick one option, and everyday practice on Meritly has several of its on-screen question types. Across Maths and English, your child chooses from drop-down lists, picks more than one answer, puts items in order, matches pairs and ticks boxes in a table; in English they click words too. Some of these question types also appear in all our Numeracy papers and in our Year 3, 5 and 7 Conventions of Language papers.
Understanding the result
NAPLAN reports each student in one of four proficiency levels: Needs additional support, Developing, Strong, and Exceeding. After a practice paper we show an indicative level based on how the paper was built — a rough signal to tell you where to look, not a prediction of the official result. The official levels come from a scaled score across the whole national cohort, and nothing outside NAPLAN can reproduce that.
NAPLAN bands and levels explained shows what each level means for your child's year, and what happened to the old bands.
Should your child practise for NAPLAN?
A little, and for the right reason. Children who've seen the format, used the on-screen tools and practised against the clock spend test day thinking about questions instead of the interface. Two or three full-length papers in the weeks before is plenty for most families; the more useful thing is what the results tell you about which topics to work on.
Sample questions
Try each one first, then open the answer and worked solution under it.
NAPLAN Year 3 Numeracy
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: B
Check subtraction: 96 − 48 = 48 ✓ but 48 − 48 = 0 ✗ — the jumps are not equal.
Check halving: 96 → 48 → 24 → 12 — each number is half the one before. ✓
The rule is halve each time.
NAPLAN Year 5 Conventions of Language
2. Choose the correct verb:
"Neither of the twins ready for the swimming carnival yet."
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: is
The subject of the sentence is Neither, not twins — the of-phrase only tells you which two people are meant.
Neither means not one of them, so it counts as singular and takes a singular verb.
The word yet places the sentence in the present, so the form needed is is.
Neither of the twins is ready for the swimming carnival yet.
NAPLAN Year 9 Numeracy
3. In a right-angled triangle, the side opposite an angle is 9 cm and the hypotenuse is 15 cm. What is the SINE of that angle, as a decimal?
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: 0.6
Sine compares the side opposite the angle with the hypotenuse.
So the ratio is 9 divided by 15.
9 ÷ 15 = 0.6. A sine is always below 1, which this answer satisfies.
The sine of the angle is 0.6.
Practise free, no account needed. Every paper is marked the moment your child finishes, with a worked solution on every question.
Free practice draws from a limited set of questions, so some will repeat. Subscribers get the full question bank and fewer repeats.
Guides
NAPLAN 2027: dates and what happens each day covers the 2027 test window, the order of the four tests and how long each one runs.
How to prepare for NAPLAN without over-practising covers what ACARA says about preparing, and a week-by-week plan from January to March.
ICAS vs NAPLAN: how the two tests differ covers who sits each test, when it runs, how entry works and how the results compare.
Meritly is an independent Australian service and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the organisations that write or run the tests we cover.