(Disclaimer: AI was not used in the planning, writing, or editing of this blog post)
I spent a couple of days last week working with the LANTITE Expert Group, and it occurred to me that many of you might like to know what happens behind the scenes in the land of LANTITE test preparation. The Expert Group brings together a collection of individuals from various educational contexts to review the newest bank of text items preservice teachers will answer.
(image source: https://teacheredtest.acer.edu.au/)
Below, I briefly introduce LANTITE, explain its significance in the Australian education landscape, and step you through the test experience. I then outline what the review process involves and finish with some personal insights based on my involvement since joining the University of Queensland in late 2021.
What is the LANTITE?
LANTITE stands for Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education. It is administered by the team at ACER. This test includes a literacy and a numeracy component, which must be passed by every beginning teacher before they can graduate. The objective is to ensure new teachers are within the top 30% of the Australian population regarding their literacy and numeracy skills. The test is the benchmark to determine if that standard is being met. I’ve written about LANTITE once before, and its role in ensuring new teacher suitability for the profession.
Sounds interesting, but what does the test involve?
The test consists of 130 items (65 each for literacy and numeracy). For literacy, two-thirds of the items test reading comprehension, while the remaining third focuses on technical skills of writing, including spelling, syntax, grammar, word usage, and text organisation. If you’re interested in digging into the nitty-gritty details, the LANTITE Assessment Framework explains all aspects of the test fully.
What’s it like to sit the LANTITE test?
Imagine you’re a preservice teacher in 2026. Alongside your university assignments, you’re sitting this high-stakes test online. Almost all the items are multiple-choice and based on a stimulus text. Most of these texts reflect what you’d actually encounter in a school, like a swimming carnival timetable or a draft letter to parents.
How hard is LANTITE? Well, some of the items are quite simple, requiring you to access and retrieve one or more pieces of information in the stimulus text. Slightly trickier items ask you to integrate and interpret, where you relate more than one part of the text to each other, infer meanings, and understand the text as a whole. The hardest questions require you to reflect and evaluate, relating parts of the text to your external knowledge, ideas, or values.
It would be good to see an example, I hear you say. Well, here’s one that ACER lists in a LANTITE practice test on their website:
Q26. Duty of Care Policy
The sentence that follows relates to a school’s draft duty of care policy.
Be alert and vigilant and intervene immediately if potentially dangerous behaviour is observed in the playground.
The policy writer wants to encourage swift action.
To emphasise this, which word should be bolded?
A. alert
B. dangerous
C. potentially
D. immediately
Reviewing the newest set of LANTITE test questions – Testing the test
There’s a common myth in education that tests like LANTITE or NAPLAN are thrown together over a weekend. After working through the LANTITE review process for the last two years, I can assure you, the validation method is very rigorous.
Step 1. Development: ACER test developers create items based on strict parameters, which are then interrogated in internal panels.
Step 2. Internal audits: Separate teams conduct “fresh eyes” reviews to check for errors, wording, and image accuracy.
Step 3. The Expert Group: This is where people like me come in. A group of practising teachers, government representatives, and academics scrutinise the refined questions. We complete the questions as if we were the students, flagging any item that might be ambiguous or unfair.
Step 4. Final refinement: Following our feedback, the questions undergo further statistical analysis, trial testing, and formal proofreading.
The goal of this multi-step process is to ensure the test remains “relevant, fair, valid and reliable” (ACER, 2026, para. 1).
Some personal thoughts about LANTITE
In my time at UQ, I’ve walked many preservice teachers through these requirements. Most pass the first time without issue, but it’s not smooth sailing for everyone. I’ve worked one-on-one with some who struggle due to test anxiety, learning disabilities like dyslexia, or having a language background other than English. Since LANTITE is a prerequisite for graduation and involves a fee for each attempt, the emotional and financial stakes are high for this minority of students. But, in an era where Generative AI makes it harder to trust the outcomes of university assessments (as this report in The Australian newspaper explained), having a controlled, external assurance of a beginning teacher’s foundational literacy and numeracy skills is arguably more important than ever.
I appreciate the opportunity to play a small role in a much bigger process, and I hope it’s been interesting for you to learn a little more about the inner workings of LANTITE. If you have any questions or views about LANTITE, let me know in the comments below, and I’ll be happy to respond. From where I sit, the rigorous item creation and review process helps LANTITE to pass the test, helping to ensure new teachers coming through are prepared for the literacy and numeracy demands of classroom teaching.
References
Australian Council for Educational Research. (2026). Equity and fairness. https://teacheredtest.acer.edu.au/about/equity-and-fairness