Battle of the sexes: How boys and girls compare in 2023 NAPLAN results

Almost 20 per cent of SA year 9 boys need extra help to catch up but at this northern suburbs school, their report cards are better than their female classmates.

• How SA students rank against nation

One in five teenage boys in South Australia are struggling with writing and grammar so much they have been identified as needing targeted tuition in the latest NAPLAN testing.

And almost half of year 3 students did not meet expectations for their age in grammar, such as being able to properly use capital letters or commas.

The proportion of students who fell short of new benchmarks this year was just as high in year 9 and skyrocketed past 70 per cent among Indigenous students.

For the first time, the results of the national literacy and numeracy tests have identified how many children in each year level “need additional support” to meet expectations in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation or numeracy.

Reporting of NAPLAN results has changed this year to place students in one of four categories, rather than the previous system of 10 bands.

Students in the next category – “developing” – were deemed to be working towards, but have not met, expectations for their age.

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Avenues College students Jess Tran, 14, and Joe Harrison, 15, sat the year 9 NAPLAN test. Picture: Matt Turner

Combined with those who need additional support this represented about a third of students.

Authorities says expectations of students were “set at a higher level than in previous years”, and the test was brought forward from May to March this year.

This means it is no longer possible to directly compare results from the past 14 years with the 2023 outcome.

However, the new category of “needs additional support” gives a more realistic picture of the number of children struggling with key skills, compared with the smaller proportion of children shown in previous years to be falling below the “national minimum standard” (NMS) which was found in a 2020 review not to be “challenging enough”.

SA Education Minister Blair Boyer said he and his counterparts around the nation agreed to “change NAPLAN to lift the minimum standards and provide a simpler measure of progress so that families have better, easier to understand information about how their child is tracking” this year.

“Proficiency levels have been set at a higher standard than in previous years so it was anticipated that a higher number of students in South Australia, and nationally, would be identified as needing additional support,” he said.

“This provides us with information on where to apply the most focused support.”

Education Department chief executive Martin Westwell said NAPLAN results “provide some important insights into how students are tracking but they also show the continued need of our state with higher levels of disadvantage (than other jurisdictions)”.

Professor Westwell said SA was focusing “on ensuring students are effective learners – and understand the context of the content – not just test performers”.

Data released by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) shows an average of one in 10 Australian students who took the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests this year were identified as “needing additional support”.

In many categories in SA the proportion sat at or below 10 per cent – but in some worrying cases it was almost double.

For example, 19.7 per cent of year 9 boys fell into this category when tested on writing (compared with 16.1 per cent nationally) and 19.2 per cent on grammar and punctuation (16.6 per cent nationally).

The lowest proportion of boys needing extra tuition to reach expected standards for their age was 8.3 per cent, for year 3 writing.

In comparison, the most girls identified as needing extra help in any category was 12.6 per cent for numeracy in year 3 (10.8 per cent nationally).

The lowest proportion of girls was also for year 3 writing, at 4.1 per cent.

Overall boys continued to perform best in numeracy, while girls outperformed boys in all other topics.

But early results at Avenues College, a birth-to-year 12 school, bucked the trend with their year 9 cohort, according to principal Hamish McDonald.

“We noticed that the male students have done better than the females but this year we had excellent results (in general),” he said.

While the difference was marginal and the data will help the school “better align teaching resources”.

Mr McDonald said in the past year 9 students could “drop off in their levels of engagement” with NAPLAN, but this year saw record completion numbers.

Avenues College year 9 Students Jess Tran, 14 and Joe Harrison, 15. Picture: Matt Turner

Year 9 student Joe Harrison, 15, was surprised boys at his school had outperformed girls and said, in his experience, male students “are more inclined to not pay as much attention”.

“There’s a difference in learning,” he said.

Jess Tran, 14, said it seemed from her classes, “boys may think their grades don’t matter”.

“Girls take it more seriously,” she said.

State opposition education spokesman John Gardner said he expected to see continued improvement in reading and writing over time but results in key subjects such as numeracy and grammar were more concerning.

“I’d like to see the government reassure parents and the community that as Labor talks about broadening schools’ focus to wellbeing and soft skills they don’t lose sight of the critical importance of these essential foundations,” Mr Gardner said.

The other two categories, in addition to “need additional support” for student results this year were “strong” (meets challenging but reasonable expectations) and “exceeding expectations”.

SA’s best results included about one in five girls exceeding expectations in year 9 writing (20.5 per cent), year 5 and year 7 spelling (19 per cent and 19.4 per cent) and year 5 reading (19.3 per cent).

The best results for boys were in year 5 and 7 spelling (16.4 per cent and 17 per cent exceeding) and year 5 reading (14.9 per cent exceeding).

The most worrying results for SA were recorded in grammar and punctuation, where almost half of year 3 and year 9 students did not meet expectations (compared with about 43 per cent nationally).

In most other cases it was about one-third of students, and these trends were consistent with the national average.

All tests are conducted online and adapt to offer students different questions depending on how they are answering.

Individual school results are not expected to be released until the end of the year.

Originally published as Battle of the sexes: How boys and girls compare in 2023 NAPLAN results