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<\/p>\nOne-third of Australian students are not meeting “challenging but reasonable” expectations in literacy and numeracy in what experts are warning is “stagnant” underperformance.<\/p>\n
About 10 per cent of students are so far behind their peers they need additional support to catch up to the two-thirds of students who met or exceeded expectations.<\/p>\n
“My personal view is that I’m very concerned. My colleague called it a national tragedy,” Professor Tanya Serry from La Trobe University said.<\/p>\n
“The reason it can be considered a national tragedy is the research evidence tells us we should be seeing about 90\u201395 per cent of students learning to read.”<\/p>\n
Professor Serry said it was the fourth straight year, since tougher marking was introduced in 2023, that NAPLAN tests have shown hundreds of thousands of students not meeting the mark.<\/p>\n
“This is not a statistic that we can be comfortable with,” Professor Serry said.<\/p>\n
Blaise Joseph says NAPLAN tests fundamental skills, crucial for later learning. (ABC News: Scott Preston)<\/p>\n
Blaise Joseph, a former teacher and education analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) called for urgent action, noting NAPLAN tested the basic skills needed for later learning.<\/p>\n
“It’s really imperative at this point that we find a way to get them up to the standard, so they’ve got those fundamental literacy and numeracy skills,” Mr Joseph said.<\/p>\n
“Those skills are so crucial for later life. All your learning is based on those foundations of literacy and numeracy.”<\/p>\n
How useful are NAPLAN test results?<\/p>\n
The worth of NAPLAN is debated every year, with some critics in academia as well as education unions calling for the test to be scrapped, questioning its relevance.<\/p>\n
Sally Larsen from the University of New England said the test was useful as a “national snapshot” but cautioned against putting too much stock “in any one test”.<\/p>\n
“Individual NAPLAN scores aren’t exact measures of students’ ability and other factors can affect the results they get in any one test,” Dr Larsen said.<\/p>\n
“These might include how students feel on the test day \u2014 are they feeling unwell or stressed about other things in their lives?”<\/p>\n
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NAPLAN provides a snapshot of student performance across the country. (ABC News: Cath McAloon)<\/p>\n
However, ACARA said it was important as the only national assessment that was comparable for all students across the country.<\/p>\n
“The first question that would be asked if we didn’t have this, is why don’t we know where our students are up to?” ACARA chief executive Stephen Gniel said.<\/p>\n
“After all, those results are about our children, they’re about the leaders of tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
The results again showed students from Indigenous backgrounds, lower socio-economic families and those from the bush were much more likely to need additional support.<\/p>\n
“There’s a very big inequity in Australia, between students from more advantaged backgrounds and students from less advantaged backgrounds, and that’s concerning,” Mr Joseph said.<\/p>\n
Mr Gniel said while NAPLAN did not identify why these concerning trends were happening, it showed policymakers areas where they should be focusing.<\/p>\n
“It is disheartening to see disparities persisting over the years in the attainment of students from our regional and remote areas, Indigenous students and those from a disadvantaged background,” Mr Gniel said.<\/p>\n
Some wins for years 5, 7 and 9<\/p>\n
Mr Gniel said this year’s results showed some good news in numeracy in years 5, 7 and 9 with an extra 29,000 students in the exceeding category compared to 2023 results.<\/p>\n
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Stephen Gniel says NAPLAN results give education policymakers an indication of where they should focus efforts. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)<\/p>\n
“This is something we want to celebrate, and we want teachers to really reflect on the good practice that’s happening there,” Mr Gniel said.<\/p>\n
However, the results showed students in year 3 recorded their lowest numeracy scores since 2023, and experts cautioned the rise in senior years was very small.<\/p>\n
“That’s always a good thing, you do have to squint to see it though, it’s a relatively small increase so I don’t think we’d want to read too much into that,” Mr Joseph said.<\/p>\n
Education Minister Jason Clare welcomed the lift in numeracy but said the results showed more work was needed.<\/p>\n
“There is good news here in numeracy. It’s going up and up in year 5 and in high school,” Mr Clare said.<\/p>\n
“Year 3 maths is a different story. That’s why we are fixing the maths curriculum for the first three years of school.”<\/p>\n
Phonics linked to schools with improved literacy<\/p>\n
Mr Clare said work was also needed in literacy and pointed to changes in teaching practice being rolled out nationally, as well as increased public-school funding.<\/p>\n
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