Queensland students have continued to lag behind the national average in literacy and numeracy, according to the latest round of NAPLAN results.
About 1.2 million students sat for NAPLAN testing in March, which assesses Australian year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students’ proficiencies across numeracy, reading, writing, spelling, and grammar and punctuation.
Queensland Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek told ABC 612 there was “more to be done” and his government would be focused on getting “back to basics”.
“Everything that we’re doing is about trying to make sure that our teachers can focus on the basics of literacy and numeracy,” he said.
Mr Lanbgroek said additional teachers and teachers aides, a focus on behaviour and bullying and NAPLAN readiness programs are all part of an approach to increasing education standards.
The NAPLAN standards
Exceeding: Exceeds expectations at the time of testing.
Strong: Meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing.
Developing: Indicates the student is working towards expectations at the time of testing.
Needs additional support: Indicates student is not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing and is likely to need help to progress.
Consistently second-last
Queensland consistently rated comparably or below the other states and territories, other than the Northern Territory, in terms of average score and students scoring at a strong proficiency level or higher.
Levels of achievement across all year levels and subjects broadly followed geographic location of students.
Students in major cities achieved higher average scores than those in regional Queensland, with scores decreasing further into remote areas.
Compared with last year’s results, Queensland year 5 students have seen improvement in writing, spelling, and numeracy, and year 7 students have improved on numeracy.
Year 3 and 9 students have achieved average results worse than last year’s on every subject.
The proportion of year 3 students scoring at a strong proficiency level or better has dropped since last year in writing, spelling, numeracy, and grammar and punctuation, with the cohort only achieving comparable scores in reading.
Are you smarter than your year 9 maths student?
In comparison with last year’s results, Queensland year 9 students achieved similar scores in spelling and numeracy, and scored worse in writing, reading, and grammar and punctuation.
Nationally, year 3 students scored within the margin of error of last year’s results in reading, spelling, and grammar and punctuation, with drops of about 3 per cent in students achieving a strong or above results in writing and a 2 per cent drop in the same metric for numeracy.
Queensland recorded a drop in reading NAPLAN levels across all testing groups in 2026. (ABC News: Timothy Ailwood)
Reading results below par
Reading scores were of particular concern for Queensland, with each year group achieving average scores below the standard set last year.
Percentage of students at “needs additional support” level for readingYear 3 — 15.2 per cent (11.3 per cent nationally)Year 5 — 9.4 per cent (7.7 per cent nationally)Year 7 — 13.7 per cent (10.7 per cent nationally)Year 9 — 15.1 per cent (11.1 per cent nationally)
Across years 3, 7 and 9, only the Northern Territory had a larger proportion of students in the “needs additional support” category, with Western Australia also coming behind Queensland in the year 5 cohort.
In terms of numeracy, Queensland’s average NAPLAN score for year 9 students was 555.8, above 2023’s score of 554 but slightly below last year’s score of 556.3 — within the margin of error.
The same metric for year 3 students shows a more precipitous drop, with an average numeracy score of 387.6, down from last year’s score of 393.1.
Numeracy scores for year 5 and 7 students fell within the margin of error of last year’s results.
The average NAPLAN score for numeracy improved for Queensland students in years 5 and 7, with year 9 falling within the margin of error. (ABC News: Keane Bourke)
Stephen Gniel, chief executive of Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) said it was important to “compare apples with apples”.
“Queensland has a higher proportion of students with disadvantaged backgrounds than some of those other jurisdictions, I think it’s important to recognise that,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Queensland Department of Education also noted the state’s participation rate of 92.2 per cent.
“Years 5, 7 and 9 showed an overall increase in participation in comparison to 2025,” they said.
“Queensland state schools achieved their highest year 7 participation rate since 2014 (92.4 per cent) and their highest year 9 rate since 2017 (85.7 per cent).”
Queensland Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek welcomed the state’s highest participation rate in NAPLAN since before the COVID-19 pandemic. (ABC Gold Coast: Dominic Cansdale)
Technology a concern
Mr Langbroek said part of a return to basics could see less use of screens and devices in schools, similar to changes set to be trialled in Victorian primary schools from 2027.
“We know [students] get lots of time on devices at home and away from school,” he said.
“That’s why we’re saying we don’t need as much technology and some of the states are actually saying we’re not going to have people on devices at all.”
Mr Gniel said it was about achieving a “balance”.
“Let’s not lurch one way or the other, lets do this in a way that’s really considered and sets our kids up for the best lives that we can,” he said.
“Literacy and numeracy are the foundational skills for all other areas, that remains the case, even though we’ve got technology that’s promising to do all of this for us.”