Year 5 student Zane Priede felt a weight on his shoulders walking into NAPLAN this year, but father Markus said there was nothing to worry about.

“Zane went really well – it was really good to see that he was above average in all his marks,” the father-of-two said.

His son “had a good run” in year 3 at their local state primary school, but the family considered the test primarily as a point-in-time snapshot of Zane’s schooling.

“The schools use it as a bit of a way to score themselves among [each other], but I don’t put too much weight on it,” Priede said.

Zane has continued to achieve strong results in year 5, but he has already started at the school he plans to attend until year 12 – St Joseph’s College, Gregory Terrace.

That means the Milton family has less to worry about than some other Brisbane parents gunning for a place in private or selective-entry high schools, where a child’s NAPLAN results can make a difference to whether they are accepted.

As the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority released NAPLAN results last Wednesday, it criticised the use of the test in enrolment processes.

“NAPLAN is not a pass or fail test – and it shouldn’t be used as a proxy for school entrance exams,” chief executive Stephen Gniel said.

Gniel urged families and schools to instead use the test “the right way” – as a diagnostic tool.

Last week, Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek also criticised what he called “an issue since time immemorial”.

“To see those statistics being used inappropriately is something that we don’t encourage, just as we don’t encourage the use of [NAPLAN results] to have league tables for people to assess which schools their children should go to,” he said.

Experts worry that misusing NAPLAN places intense pressure on students to perform in the otherwise low-stakes test, to help boost a school’s marketability.

At several Brisbane Catholic and independent high schools, a NAPLAN score is also used to boost families’ applications in the highly competitive enrolment processes.

Two-thirds of the city’s private schools explicitly require parents to supply NAPLAN results as part of their application processes. At others, schools request the results in scholarship or bursary applications.

Some private schools that do not ask for NAPLAN results on enrolment, such as those accepting applications up to a decade in advance, request results closer to a student’s starting date.

Brisbane State High School’s selective-entry academic pathway requests year 5 NAPLAN results for year 7 entry, alongside entrance exams.

So do the Brisbane-based state schools the Queensland Academy of Science, Maths, and Technology and the Queensland Academies Creative Industries.

Brisbane Grammar School’s deputy headmaster of teaching and learning, Steve Uscinski, defended the inner-city independent school’s use of the test, outlining its role in enrolment applications as “consistent with its intended purpose and recognised limitations”.

“NAPLAN provides a point-in-time indication of a student’s achievement in literacy and numeracy, and is never used in isolation to make enrolment or scholarship decisions,” he said.

“The school recognises that no single assessment can provide a complete picture of a student’s abilities, potential or readiness to engage in a particular educational environment.”

Uscinski said the test was useful because it provided a nationally consistent measure of student progress, and was considered alongside “academic, co-curricular, personal and other relevant information” included in application forms.

Inner-west state school parent Lauren Jackson said she knew other families with students as young as year 1 who were already organising tutors to boost their academic performance.

“It’s just become this accepted practice all the way through school,” she said.

A member of her family who had been through the high school enrolment process treated NAPLAN results as “a big deal”.

“She knew moving from a state school into a private school – they want good NAPLAN results,” Jackson said.

“I know when [my son] goes on to a private school, they’ll look at that, but in terms of his actual learning, I don’t think about it at all.”

State-by-state and national NAPLAN data was publicly released on the ACARA website on August 5.