In 2008 a major national agenda was established with a common framework for reform in education agreed between the Australian Government and the state and territory governments through the National Education Agreement (NEA). The clear and widely supported national education goals, articulated in the NEA and the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, provide a solid reference point on which to build evaluation and assessment strategies to achieve accountability and improvement in student learning. The Australian approach combines the development of goals, monitoring and reporting at the national level with local evaluation and assessment practices shaped by jurisdiction-level school improvement frameworks. While the key elements of evaluation and assessment are well established at student, teacher, school and system levels, challenges remain in determining what constitutes a desirable measure of national consistency as against legitimate cross-jurisdiction diversity, and in articulating the different elements of the overall evaluation and assessment framework to ensure consistency and complementarity.