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Thirty-six questions in 45 minutes, sat on screen, with no calculator. It is the first national test most children ever take, and for most of them the format is a bigger obstacle than the maths.
Last updated: 5 October 2026
Number work carries the paper, roughly a third to a half of it. Then measurement, space, a little statistics and a small amount of pattern work.
In practice that means place value into the thousands, addition and subtraction with regrouping, early multiplication and division, and simple fractions of a shape or a group. It also means length and mass, time on both analogue and digital clocks, calendars, 2D shapes and symmetry, position and direction, and reading a picture or column graph.
Try each one first, then open the answer and worked solution under it.
1. Class 3K is planning a survey. Tick whether each question would get answers that are numbers or answers that are words.
| numbers | words | |
|---|---|---|
| How many pets do you have? | ||
| What is your favourite colour? | ||
| How do you get to school? | ||
| How many letters are in your first name? | ||
| How many minutes does it take you to get to school? |
Correct answer:
A 'How many …?' question is answered by counting, so the answers are numbers: 2 pets, 5 letters, 15 minutes.
'What is your favourite colour?' is answered with words such as red or blue.
'How do you get to school?' is answered with words such as walk, bus or car.
Numbers: pets, letters in a name, minutes to school. Words: favourite colour, how you get to school.
2. Aarav's bus leaves at 8:05. It takes him 20 minutes to walk to the bus stop. What is the latest time he can leave home? (Write it like 7:30.)
Correct answer: 7:45
Count BACKWARDS from 8:05.
Back 5 minutes reaches 8:00, and back 15 more reaches 7:45 — that is 20 minutes in total.
Aarav must leave home by 7:45.
3. Three books each have a mass of 450 g. What is their total mass?
Correct answer: D
Add the three masses: 3 × 450 = 1 350 g.
There are 1 000 g in a kilogram, so 1 350 g is 1 kg with 350 g left over.
That is 1 kg 350 g.
The three books have a total mass of 1 kg 350 g.
The real test is adaptive. It branches between testlets depending on how a student is going, so two children may not see the same questions. Our papers cover the same content and difficulty spread in a single pass, without the branching.
Not every question is multiple choice. Some ask your child to type a number, choose more than one answer, put items in order or match pairs, which are among the on-screen question types NAPLAN online uses.
Two or three full-length papers in the weeks before, and not much more. The purpose at this age is familiarity: knowing what 36 questions feels like, and not panicking at question 30.
What is worth more than extra papers is what you do with the results. If the marks went on scale reading, spend a week reading real scales. If they went on two-step problems, do fewer questions and have your child say the two steps out loud first.
How long is the Year 3 NAPLAN Numeracy test?
Thirty-six questions in 45 minutes, with no calculator.
Does my child need a calculator?
Not at Year 3, and not at Year 5. A calculator only appears from Year 7, and even then the opening section is sat without one.
Year 3 also sits: Reading · Conventions of Language
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.
Meritly is an independent Australian service and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the organisations that write or run the tests we cover.