LANTITE Literacy: Reading and Technical Writing

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The LANTITE literacy component is 65 questions in 120 minutes, marked against the top 30% of the Australian adult population. It splits into two task types: reading comprehension (about two-thirds of items) and technical skills of writing (about one-third). Most candidates over-prepare the reading and walk into the technical-writing items expecting an essay. There is no essay. Literacy is the harder of the two components to pass first time, and the technical-writing task is where the marks quietly go missing. (Australian Council for Educational Research — ACER, 2026.)

1. What the LANTITE literacy component is

The literacy component is one of the two parts of LANTITE (the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education), administered nationally by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). It is delivered as a single section of 65 questions over 120 minutes, which includes a short tutorial at the start.

It does not test your ability to teach literacy. It tests your own personal literacy: the reading and language skills a teacher uses in professional work. The pass standard is achievement equivalent to the top 30 per cent of the Australian adult population, a benchmark empirically validated in 2017 against the OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). That 2017 validation was a one-time standard-setting exercise rather than a moving target, so the top-30-per-cent benchmark has held steady since. There is no published percentage cut-off — you either meet the standard or you do not.

The component is sat by students in initial teacher education programs, and it runs as one continuous block to manage rather than separately timed parts.

The component was developed with reference to the Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF), in consultation with teacher educators, so the texts and tasks sit within a teacher's professional context rather than an academic one. That professional framing is why the reading stimulus looks like school policies and student reports rather than literary passages. (ACER Skills and Content Guide, 2023.)

2. The two task types at a glance

Within that single section there are two task types. Reading comprehension and technical-writing items are interleaved throughout the section, not blocked into separate parts, so you move between them as you work. (ACER, 2026.)

The split is ACER's own wording: about two-thirds of the questions are based on reading texts, and one-third assess technical skills of writing.

Item formats

Items are selected-response (for example multiple choice) or short-answer. No extended writing is required anywhere in the component. Some technical-writing items ask you to type a single word, for instance the correctly spelled or grammatically correct form. (ACER Skills and Content Guide, 2023.)

3. Task type 1: reading comprehension

About two-thirds of the items are reading comprehension. This is the larger and more familiar task, and for most candidates the more comfortable one. (ACER, 2026.)

Reading is assessed across three processes: access and identify, integrate and interpret, and evaluate and reflect. In plain terms, access and identify means finding specific information stated in a text, integrate and interpret means connecting ideas across the text to work out something it does not state outright, and evaluate and reflect means weighing or judging what the text is doing. The same passage can carry items from all three processes, so a single text may ask you to locate a fact, link two sections, and then judge the writer's intent.

The stimulus texts cover a wide range of types: procedural, regulatory and technical; descriptive, informative and persuasive; and narrative. The contexts are ones a teacher would realistically meet, such as school policies, student reports, professional communications, and further education material. Because that range spans dense regulatory text and plain narrative, the difficulty shifts with the text type rather than staying flat across the task.

4. Task type 2: technical skills of writing (the silent mark-loser)

About one-third of the items assess technical skills of writing. This is the task most candidates underestimate, and the research points to it as the reason literacy is the harder component to pass first time. It assesses four areas: syntax and grammar; spelling; word usage; and text organisation. (ACER, 2026.)

It is not essay writing

This is the part of the literacy component candidates most often misread. The technical-writing task is not essay writing. There is no extended written response anywhere in LANTITE literacy. Instead, the items test your ability to identify and correct language issues in a professional context, through selected-response questions or single-word-typed answers.

The items are precise, rule-based, single-correct-answer questions: a misplaced comma, a subject-verb disagreement, a wrong word choice. You cannot talk your way through them the way you might through an essay, and spell-check habits do not transfer, because the test rewards explicit knowledge of English mechanics rather than fluent writing.

Who loses marks here

Two groups lose marks on this task disproportionately. EAL/D candidates (English as an additional language or dialect) lose marks because the items reward explicit grammar and usage knowledge. So do confident readers, who breeze through the reading task and assume the writing items will follow, then trip on technical rules they have never had to state out loud.

5. How hard is it? The first-attempt picture

Literacy is the harder of the two LANTITE components to pass on the first try. The most recent figures, for 2024, show:

Source: Department of Education, 2024.

The gap is the headline. Roughly one in eight candidates does not pass literacy first time, against around one in seventeen for numeracy. That confirms the common estimate of a 10 to 12 per cent literacy fail rate versus around 6 per cent for numeracy, and it runs counter to most candidates' instincts, who assume numeracy will be the obstacle.

The within-year figures (91.6% literacy, 95.7% numeracy) show most candidates who miss first time pass on a resit within their year of registration. For literacy that within-year rate climbs from 88.1% to 91.6%, so a sizeable share of the first-attempt shortfall is recovered on a second sitting rather than persisting. The practical reading of the table is that the first attempt is the hard part: clear it and you are done, miss it and the odds of passing soon after are strong. Literacy is very passable. It just is not a formality, and the margin between the two components comes down almost entirely to the technical-writing task that sits inside the literacy component.

6. How to prepare for LANTITE literacy

Treat it like a standardised test: learn the format, practise under time, and target the technical-writing task specifically rather than spreading effort evenly.

Start with ACER's free official practice materials, which mirror the real question style and interface. For literacy these include an online practice test, a PDF literacy practice test with worked solutions and a score-equivalence table, two sets of 30 literacy practice questions (a 2017 set and a 2023 set, both with worked solutions), combined literacy and numeracy sample questions, retired test questions, and a guide on getting best value from the practice tests. (ACER, 2026.)

University study-skills services give consistent advice: begin with structure and mechanics (punctuation, syntax, grammar) and sit the official practice test under exam conditions, timed, without external help or spell-check, so you find your real weak points. (Curtin UniSkills, 2026.)

A workable plan

A NSW note

From 1 August 2026, passing LANTITE becomes a prerequisite for Conditional accreditation with the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), so in NSW the test shifts from a graduation requirement toward an entry requirement. The detail lives in our complete LANTITE guide. (NESA, 2026.)

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