This manual provides information to assist schools and school systems to implement changes required by Education Ministers to enrolment forms (and associated data collection and storage processes). This is to enable nationally comparable reporting of students' outcomes against the "National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century." The changes relate to the collection of information on students': (1) sex; (2) Indigenous status; (3) socioeconomic background; and (4) language background. Some of the required data involves collecting information about the background of students' parents/guardians. The manual describes what is involved and what it means in practical terms for schools, school systems and testing agents. In brief, schools and school systems will need to collect background information on relevant students using agreed questions. The resulting information is to be supplied to testing agents (see Section 2.1.3) so that it can be linked with students' test forms. The manual is intended for people in schools and school systems who are involved in the: (1) design of enrolment forms and enrolment processes; (2) collection of information from parents; (3) design, maintenance or modification of student information storage and retrieval systems; (4) updating of student records; and (5) school-level management or coordination of literacy, numeracy and national sample testing. The manual also provides information for testing agents, i.e. the organisations that conduct the assessments. In some cases, school systems are the testing agents. Not all schools will need to use this manual. In large systems, for example, implementation will be a central responsibility. Appended are: (1) Implementation Checklist; (2) Background to the Implementation of Agreed Definitions for Student Background Characteristics; (3) Special Data Collection Forms; (4) Glossary; (5) Main Languages Spoken, by State/Territory; (6) Australian Standard Classification of Languages Coding Index; (7) Main Countries of Birth, by State/Territory; and (8) Standard Australian Classification of Countries (SACC) Coding Index.