NAPLAN no-shows lead to delay of students’ results

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority has suppressed the 2022 national, state and territory results until the end of the year.

Up to 15 per cent of students failed to sit some of the NAPLAN exams this year.

School students went missing for half a million NAPLAN tests of literacy and numeracy this year, as the flu, floods and Covid-19 kept more children home during the pandemic.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has suppressed the initial results of the NAPLAN tests, citing record low participation rates.

The national, state and territory data – the best indication of how students have fared after two years of lockdowns and school disruptions – was due for release on Friday but will be reviewed before publication in November.

Parents and schools will be sent NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) results for individual students in the next few weeks.

ACARA chief executive David de Carvalho blamed flu, floods and the pandemic for lowering participation rates by 1-2 per cent among primary school students, and 3 per cent among high school students.

During NAPLAN in May – the first to be held entirely online – students failed to show up for 567,000 test sessions in writing, grammar and punctuation, spelling, reading and numeracy.

High school students were the most likely to have skipped the tests, with 15 per cent of year 9 students failing to take part this year.

The high level of teenagers withdrawing from NAPLAN is of concern due to growing evidence of “school refusal’’ and mental health problems since the start of the pandemic. NAPLAN no-shows are usually most common among students from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially those struggling academically or with learning disorders.

Mr de Carvalho said ACARA needed to review the state and territory trends before making the data public.

“We need … to understand whether any change is due to overall achievement level, or to the particular groups of students … absent through testing, whether (they were) from lower- or higher-performing cohorts,’’ he said.

Federal opposition education spokesman Alan Tudge demanded that ACARA release the results ­immediately for “transparency’’.

“School communities across Australia know that the pandemic and lockdowns have had impacts on children’s education,’’ he said on Friday.

“ACARA’s decision to delay the release of NAPLAN ­results is concerning as it risks the ability of government to see the big-picture impacts of Covid and to address them.

“I call on ACARA to release this data, with any caveat they may see fit, in the interests of transparency.’’

A spokeswoman for federal Education Minister Jason Clare said it was a decision for the ACARA board to publish the data.

“I understand that they want to ensure it’s right; that makes sense,’’ she said.

Australian Secondary Principals’ Association president Andrew Pierpoint said it would be premature to release data that might be flawed. He said there was no indication that more ­students were refusing to sit the tests, but many had missed out due to illness or flooding.

A source familiar with the data told The Weekend Australian that on a national level, students’ writing proficiency had improved this year, while reading remained stable.

Numeracy was the field most impacted by student absences, with 15 per cent of year 9 students and 11 per cent of year 7 students missing the maths test.

ACARA said year 9 participation rates now fell below the “technical data standard’’ of 90 per cent for all domains, making it harder to compare performance over the years in each state and territory.

It refused to release any national data, despite confirming participation rates remained high enough to be reliable.

“Closer analysis of the state/territory level results is being done to see if any change is due to change in achievement level or to the groups of students who were absent from testing,’’ ACARA stated.