The federal government has vowed to make sure states spend the extra money it's tipping into schools wisely to lift student results after another lacklustre round of test scores.
The states were on Wednesday analysing why their students' performance has shown little improvement - and gone backwards in writing tasks.
The results from May's tests point to small gains across the board in reading and numeracy since 2008, but results for writing have dropped since 2011.
Education Minister Simon Birmingham will discuss how to turn around the worrying trends in NAPLAN literacy and numeracy tests with his state and territory counterparts.
Senator Birmingham said it was worrying these skills appeared to be going backwards.
He said the nation needed to look at what can be learned from high-achieving schools.
The government has commissioned businessman David Gonski to lead a review.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said money had to be spent in the right way.
"We've now got one funding model, so that's a gigantic, structural reform, very important, but now we've got to get the educational bang for the taxpayers' buck," he told reporters in West Australian town of Albany.
In Victoria, Education Minister James Merlino blamed the increasing use of technology and a decline in handwriting for poor writing scores.
"I think that's part of our concern. Education ministers all around the nation... (are) very firm in the belief that we have to continue (with) primary school-level writing being handwriting," he told ABC Radio.
In the writing test, students had to produce either a persuasive or narrative piece on a given topic.
The South Australian government is so concerned by the results it has pledged an extra $67.5 million for schools.
The money will be used to employ more teachers to help improve literacy and numeracy, based on analysis of school NAPLAN scores, SA Education Minister Susan Close said.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has credited new minimum standards required for HSC candidates for the state's improved NAPLAN results.
The state's education minister, Rob Stokes, has spoken to his department about how to address the "one aberration" - Year 5 grammar results.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority said there was some hope in the long-term trends, with gradual growth over the past decade in the number of students performing at the top end, particularly in Year 3 reading.
If those improvements could be replicated in more areas, the national average would improve, ACARA head Robert Randall said.
"We can find cases where schools are doing tremendous things because that's where the difference is made, at the school level," he told ABC TV.
"We do need to pick up on those and say if it's working well in these schools, why can't it work well across a whole range of schools?"
