It is indeed a pleasure to welcome readers to the first issue of the Australian Journal of Education for 2013, and the first to emerge under the banner of SAGE Publications. While the editorial functions of the AJE will remain at the Australian Council for Educational Research, the sales, distribution and marketing of the AJE will be handled by SAGE. We look forward to a long and fruitful association with SAGE and see this as the start of a new era of growth in circulation, enabling us to offer authors greatly increased exposure for their work.
In due course, the submission and review process will be migrated from the BePress system currently in use to the SAGE online manuscript submission and peer review system, SAGE Track. To ensure continuity, we will continue to process articles submitted through the AJE website (http://research.acer.edu.au/aje) and will redirect submissions to SAGE Track as that becomes necessary.
The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a key element of the National Assessment Program used by governments, education authorities and schools to determine the extent to which Australian schoolchildren are meeting important educational outcomes. But not all students are assessed under NAPLAN, and in particular, students with additional needs may be exempted, or adjustments may be made to the assessment procedures to enable them to participate. Consequently, information about the achievement of these students (predominantly those with learning disabilities, emotional and behavioural disabilities and autism) is lacking. Ian Dempsey and Michael Davies see this as leaving Australian educational authorities unaccountable for these students. By linking data...