Epic fail: NAPLAN reveals one in three students below standard

At least 400,000 Australian ­children have fallen so far behind at school they require catch-up ­tutoring, as governments squabble over the reforms and funding required to reverse decades of educational decline | Read the NAPLAN results.

At least 400,000 Australian ­children have fallen so far behind at school they require catch-up ­tutoring, as governments squabble over the reforms and funding required to reverse decades of educational decline.

In “shocking” results that spell trouble for struggling students, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy ­(NAPLAN) – has identified one in 10 children who “need additional support to progress satisfactorily’’.

In addition, nearly a quarter of the 1.3 million children from 9431 schools who sat the tests for years 3, 5, 7 and 9 this year are deemed to be “developing’’ and “working towards expectations at the time of testing’’ – educational jargon for failing to pass minimum standards.

Overall, one in three students who failed baseline standards for reading and maths in this year’s NAPLAN tests.

Migrant kids are leapfrogging Australian-born students, while Aboriginal and Torres Strait ­Islander children are failing at four times the rate of non-­Indigenous classmates.

Boys are almost twice as likely as girls to start high school functionally illiterate. By year 7, one in eight boys requires remedial reading lessons.

Trapped in a circle of inter­generational disadvantage, teenagers whose parents dropped out of high school are reading and writing at a level two years behind their classmates with university-educated parents.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will use the dire ­results to strongarm stubborn state governments to commit to “practical reforms” such as phonics checks and numeracy checks, evidence-based teaching and catch-up tutoring’, in return for $16bn in bonus commonwealth cash over the next decade.

“Your chances in life shouldn’t depend on your parents’ pay ­packet or the colour of your skin, but these results again show that’s still the case,’’ Mr Clare said.

“These (NAPLAN) results show why serious reform is needed and why we need to tie additional funding to reforms that will help students catch up, keep up and finish school.’’

Ninety per cent of Indigenous children in remote communities have failed to reach minimum standards of literacy and numeracy this year, with three out of four requiring remedial intervention.

Across Australia, the average Indigenous teenager in year 9 has the reading ability of a non-Indigenous 10-year-old in year 5.

The NAPLAN data reveals strong links between children’s academic success and parental education and income.

By the time they finish primary school, students with a university-educated parent are typically reading at year 9 level. But year 9 students whose parents failed to finish year 12 have the reading ability of a primary school student in year 5, on average.

The children of migrant ­parents who speak a foreign ­language have twice the chance of excelling in year 9 maths, and even outperform their classmates in English.

Overall, one in three students has fallen below the standard ­expected, averaged across test ­results in all years for reading, writing, numeracy, spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Extrapolated across the nation’s 4.09 million students, the NAPLAN results reveal that one million students fall below the baseline for literacy and numeracy, including 420,000 who require intervention to catch up.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which administers the annual NAPLAN tests, said this year’s results were “stable’’ compared with 2023 but could not be compared to previous results, due to a change in scaling and proficiency levels last year.

“The 2024 results continue to show strong performance from Australian students in literacy and numeracy,’’ said ACARA’s new chief executive, Stephen Gniel.

“The challenges remain with supporting those students identified in the ‘needs additional support’ category and tackling the ongoing educational disparities for students from non-urban areas, First Nations Australian heritage and those with low socio-economic backgrounds.’’

Federal opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said the results were “shocking’’ and demanded a “back-to-basics education sharply focused on literacy and numeracy, underpinned by explicit teaching and a knowledge-rich, commonsense curriculum’’.

“Getting back to basics also means ridding the classroom of indoctrination and other activist causes,’’ she said. “Every child ­deserves to reach his or her best potential – that is why it is vital to support our nation’s hardworking educators with evidence-based teaching resources so they can excel in the classroom.’’

The NAPLAN data, to be made public on Wednesday, exposes the Northern Territory and Queensland as the worst performers for Year 9 literacy. Six out of 10 teenagers in the Territory, which has the largest proportion of First Nations students, failed to meet the year 9 baseline reading standard.

Queensland, which insists on teaching an outdated version of the national curriculum, was the worst-performing state, with 36.8 per cent of year 3 students struggling to read properly, 37 per cent of year 7 students below-par at the start of high school, and 42.2 per cent of year 9 students reading at a level below the national standard.

The national curriculum was revised in 2022 but Queensland has given schools to 2027 to adopt the changes, which focus on phonics-based reading. Despite the poor results, Education Minister Di Farmer said that after extensive discussions with teachers, principals, and education unions, Queensland was taking a “phased ­approach” to implementing version nine of the curriculum “allowing greater flexibility for schools to manage workload’’.

Success: Mount Lawley Senior High principal Lesley Street and students Hansika Jakkireddy and Bekhi Batnyam. Picture: Colin Murty

Queensland has also been late to adopt a national “phonics check’’ to test whether year 1 students can sound out the alphabet and letter combinations of words.

Western Australia, which mandates teaching through “explicit instruction’’, and has a focus on phonics, boasts the best results of any state, with 28.5 per cent of year 9 students reading below the minimum standard – on par with the ACT. WA Education Minister Tony Buti said the state had been the first to introduce a minimum standard of literacy and numeracy as part of the senior secondary certificate of education. Students miss out on a certificate unless they pass NAPLAN in year 9, or pass a similar test before leaving school.

At Mount Lawley Senior High School in Perth – where students performed above or well above the national average in every testing domain last year – principal Lesley Street fosters a culture of excellence, respect, learning and perseverance. “We focus on trying to meet each student’s needs and ­ensure they feel a sense of belonging,’’ she said. “We have strong links with our local primary feeder schools, where we liaise with them to identify students with weak literacy and numeracy for immediate intervention when they arrive in high school.’’

Students in years 7 and 8 are nurtured in a “middle school’’, where “every teacher views themselves as a teacher of literacy and numeracy, not only a subject specialist’’. Students struggling with reading, writing and numeracy are taken aside for catch-up tutoring during school hours, and the school provides a homework club in the library.

In NSW, which has banned mobile phones in schools, delivered teachers a pay rise and recently announced a fact-filled, simpler syllabus, 81 per cent of year 3 students recorded “strong” or “exceeding” results in writing. NSW Education Minister Prue Car is leading a state revolt against Mr Clare’s Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, which would see the commonwealth increase its share of spending on public schools from 20 per cent to 22.5 per cent of running costs in ­return for states hitting higher ­targets for literacy and numeracy, school attendance and Year 12 completion.