Education experts are sounding the alarm after recent NAPLAN test results showed more than one-third of students failed to meet literacy and numeracy expectations.
The 2026 Annual National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) for 1.2 million students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 were released today and they show a worrying trend.
More than a third of students — 33.5 per cent — are failing to meet or exceed literacy and numeracy aims.
A worrying 10 per cent of pupils are so far behind their peers they need extra help to catch up, the ABC reports.
La Trobe University’s Tanya Sherry said she was personally concerned about the results.
“My colleague called it a national tragedy,” the Associate Professor of Literacy and Reading at the School of Education told the broadcaster. “The reason it can be considered a national tragedy is the research evidence tells us we should be seeing about 90–95 per cent of students learning to read.”
She said too many children are leaving the earliest years without the literacy skills they need — a problem she suggested was disproportionately impacting regional students.
Analysis carried out by the ABC showed the percentage of students rated as strong or exceeding differed greatly depending on the location of the school.
It found 70 per cent of students from major city schools were rated strong or exceeding in reading while just 32.1 per cent from very remote schools were. The figures were identical for numeracy skills.
“NAPLAN data continues to show an alarming difference based on social groupings within the country,” she said.
“Students from more advantaged areas, and those who live in urban areas of Australia, are much more likely to be meeting proficiency levels. This is a concerning social equity issue.”
La Trobe Distinguished Professor Pamela Snow said fewer than 20 per cent of students who are behind on reading by Year 3 will catch up.
“Low literacy and numeracy skills follow students across their lives and limit their post-school training and vocational choices,” she said.
“NAPLAN data reflects a range of factors, but this year’s results indicate that we are still not pulling the instruction lever as hard as we need to.”
Green shoots
Despite this, an extra 29,000 students were placed in the exceeding category for numeracy compared to 2023 results, according to the ABC.
However, experts warned the rise was very small and came as Year 3 recorded their lowest numeracy scores since 2023.
For education experts like Blaise Joseph from the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), the results were “disappointing yet unsurprising”.
He said while funding had gone up over the decade by 27 per cent in public schools to $26,000 per student, and by 25 per cent in private schools to $15,000 per student, results had not.
“We are still focusing way too much on how much taxpayer money is spent, and nowhere near enough on how it is spent,” he said.
Education Minister Jason Clare welcomed the lift in numeracy but said the results showed more work was needed.
“There is good news here in numeracy. It’s going up and up in Year 5 and in high school,” Mr Clare said.
“Year 3 maths is a different story. That’s why we are fixing the maths curriculum for the first three years of school.”
The Minister said work was clearly needed in literacy and pointed to changes in teaching practices being rolled out nationally.
He also said the results showed schools using explicit teaching methods, including phonics, and gave small-group tutoring to lagging pupils, tended to fare better.
Associate Professor Chrissy Monteleone, Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching at La Trobe, agreed.
“Once we know which students require additional support, the response needs to be high-quality, explicit instruction, with clear, direct modelling and staying with those mathematical skills until students have reached accuracy,” she said.
“Once accuracy is secure, the next step is building fluency with repeated, structured practice so that skill becomes automatic. This sequence matters because we want students to be able to apply their mathematical understandings quickly and flexibly to problems like those presented in NAPLAN.”
The results also appeared to show female students outperforming their male peers in literacy while boys similarly outperformed females in numeracy.
The gender gap is a story we need to consider as a nation, Prof Monteleone said.
“By Year 9, boys are substantially exceeding girls in numeracy,” she said.
“That gap matters beyond NAPLAN, because students will use the data to determine whether they choose STEM subjects in secondary school and beyond. We want more girls choosing STEM and we need to ensure that the instruction in primary and secondary schools includes well taught foundational mathematics that benefit all students fairly.”