NAPLAN 2023 results: One in three fail to meet benchmark in state snapshot

The 2023 NAPLAN results are a “reality check” for schools and parents, but NSW Education Minister Prue Car hopes a permanent tutoring program will help correct the course.

NSW Education Minister Prue Car has pledged “ongoing” support from the state government for additional school-based tutoring in literacy and numeracy, in a bid to turn around the state’s dismal NAPLAN results.

The Covid intensive learning support program expires at the end of the year, but the Minister said funding for a permanent version of the small group tutoring scheme would come with the September budget.

“We found that lots of kids, even before the election under the previous government, were benefiting, so what we’re doing is we’re actually turning this into a targeted permanent program,” she said.

“We’re going to make sure we can get as many kids as possible.”

At Chullora Public School in Sydney’s southwest, principal Bahia Almir said a small group reading intervention program delivered by the Rev. Bill Crews Foundation has given her struggling students a “tremendous” boost, but warned such schemes are no quick fix without follow-through in the classroom.

Chullora Public School principal Mrs Bahia Almir with students Iesha Sabour, 8, Life Fifita, 8, Yuqi Li, 8, and Marcus Holten, 9. Picture: Justin Lloyd

“You need to follow up. You can’t just say ‘okay, they’ve had that program, it’s been intensive, they’re going to be fine’,” Mrs Almir said.

“With any program, with any learning … you need to reinforce those skills that they have been taught and apply those strategies across not just literacy and numeracy, but also in science, in geography and the other key learning areas.”

Opposition education spokesperson Sarah Mitchell challenged the government’s commitment to small group tutoring, and said the $50 million per year promised in the lead-up to the election is “nowhere near enough funding to provide the support our kids so clearly need”.

“If the Minister is serious about improving student outcomes, she should be matching the investments of the Liberals and Nationals Government.”

NSW’s damning NAPLAN results revealed

Nearly one in three NSW schoolkids have failed to meet national benchmarks in literacy and maths following a massive shake-up to the 2023 NAPLAN tests — and grammar is their worst subject of all.

Across the four year groups and five ‘domains’ tested, 30.1 per cent of NSW students on average fell into the new ‘needs additional support’ or ‘developing’ categories, and almost one in 10 students are in the lowest band alone.

Centre for Independent Studies education director Glenn Fahey said the results “may seem alarming”, they’re accurate by international standards and will come as a “reality check” for school systems.

“The (former) national minimum standard was extraordinarily low, students could effectively guess their way to achieving a level that was considered satisfactory,” he said.

The number of students at each year level flunking the test was highest in the grammar and punctuation assessment, and 40.8 per cent of Year 9s fell into the bottom two categories.

Sydney University Professor of Linguistics Nick Enfield said those results aren’t surprising, with computers, phones, social media and texting changing the way young people use grammar.

“They induce new habits in users, and their “rules” are not really rules but more organic norms,” he explained.

Year 5 students from Ravenswood School for Girls Eleanor Hattersley, Tina Yu and Sophie Humburg sat their NAPLAN exams in March. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“Kids follow those rules but aren’t tested on them. NAPLAN only tests them on the old-fashioned conventional practices.”

Primary school students generally scored better than high schoolers across all the literacy tests. By the time they hit Year 9, 35 per cent of test-takers fell below the benchmarks.

Matrix English tutor Deborah Prospero said based on her experience, the poor performance in grammar “checks out”.

“There are 160 points in the (old) Year 9-10 English syllabus, but less than 10 of those refer to grammar, and even fewer refer to specific grammar constructions,” she said.

“From my perspective, both teachers and students are not supported when it comes to grammar.”

This year saw the biggest reforms to NAPLAN since it began in 2008, with the testing window moved forward from May to March and students’ results sorted into just four levels of achievement: ‘needs additional support’, ‘developing’, ‘strong’ and ‘exceeding’.

NSW Education Minister Prue Car said the government would be creating a literacy and numeracy tutoring program to ensure students can reach their potential.

“The NAPLAN results are the first to reflect new changes in reporting and as such give us greater insight into which students need more support, and those who have met the higher level proficiency expectations,” she said.

Girls at Ravenswood, a private school on Sydney’s upper north shore, perform well above the state and national average. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said it’s by design that there are increased number of students failing to meet the new national standards this year.

“We have done this on purpose,” he said.

“We have raised the minimum standard students are now expected to meet so we can really identify the students who need additional support. The next step is to provide them with that support.”

However, the new benchmarks also render the 2023 results incompatible with previous years, “resetting the time series” on 14 years of educational data.

Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson described the results as “terrible” and said they necessitated “urgent action” from Commonwealth and state Labor governments.

“The latest NAPLAN results confirm the opposition’s deep concerns that declining school standards have become a national embarrassment,” Senator Henderson said.

“Young Australians and their families deserve better than this and so does our country.”

David de Carvalho, CEO of NAPLAN’s administration body ACARA, said the previous 10-band system was “a statistical construct” and the old national benchmark was “arbitrary”.

David de Carvalho, CEO of NAPLAN testing authority ACARA. Picture: Supplied

Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment director Jim Tognolini said he was surprised ACARA couldn’t provide a way to compare the 2023 results to previous years’.

“To stop the timeline like that is a problem,” he said.

“It is an issue for the sectors and school systems, they will be trying to find ways to make this data match up.”

At Ravenswood School for Girls, deputy principal Jennifer Richardson said her school would be looking at their other metrics for analysing student performance historically.

“The new methodology is currently challenging to accurately track progress over time,” she said.

“However we are hopeful that we will soon be able to compare the difference between our results against other benchmarked averages … and see how far above we are.”

Year 5 girls Eleanor Hattersley and Tina Yu said after receiving their individual NAPLAN scores back, they’ll be working hard to improve their maths skills.

“I want to improve on my spelling and my speed in maths so that next time I have time to answer all the questions,” Eleanor said.