After two years of disruptions, when children and parents bore the brunt of unnecessarily prolonged school closures, the 2022 NAPLAN results are mixed news at best. The annual national assessment for all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 shows no significant fall in reading and writing test scores despite the mass shift to learning at home. The same cannot be said for what some education experts say is an alarming decline in numeracy.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare says the results, which more or less level-peg with pre-pandemic outcomes are “better than expected”. That there has been no big COVID-19 learning loss is no cause for complacency when, as the Grattan Institute’s Danielle Wood told Labor’s jobs summit in September, “the performance of Australian school students in reading and maths – both compared to other countries and to our own performance over time – is going backwards”.