Latest news with #NationalAssessmentProgram—LiteracyandNumeracy
ABC News
30-07-2025
- General
- ABC News
Some parents should pay more attention to NAPLAN scores than others. What to do if your kid falls behind
Education can be a confusing mess of acronyms so let's break it down for you. NAPLAN (National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy) is an annual test of literacy and numeracy sat by students in years 3,5,7 and 9 across Australia's 10,000 schools. It serves the dual purposes of giving individual student and school results, as well as informing policymakers about the overall health of school systems. Media reporting is focused on national averages released today, which again show concerning trends with one third of students not meeting expectations in literacy and numeracy. Separately, parents will have received their individual results over the last fortnight and experts say it's vital to check the results. That's because NAPLAN tests basic literacy and numeracy, which are the building blocks of an education and are vital for kids when they grow up — regardless of whether they pursue university. "NAPLAN is actually a test of applied skill so it's a test of literacy skills and numeracy skills. So, these are the types of skills that people really need in day-to-day life," said the Grattan Institute's Education Director, Jordana Hunter. "Whether it be things like running a small business, estimating cost and quantities if you're a tradesperson, or engaging in books and movies and fun cultural things that we all want to enjoy." Dr Hunter said we should have 90 per cent of students in the top two proficiency standards — "exceeding" and "strong". Instead, only two thirds are hitting the mark, with one third rated "developing" or "needing additional support" — meaning they're not yet hitting expectations defined as "challenging but reasonable". NAPLAN is broken up into four achievement bands — exceeding, strong, developing and needs additional support. If your child is in the top two bands the main thing to focus on may be ways to extend your child's learning and keep pushing them. However, Dr Hunter said parents of students in the lower two bands — developing or needs additional support — need to take urgent action to set their children up for their schooling and later lives. Exceeding: Exceeds expectations at the time of testing Strong: Meets the challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing Developing: Indicates the student is working towards expectations at the time of testing Needs additional support: Indicates the student is not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing and is likely to need help to progress "It's important for parents to understand that the way those categories are labelled is confusing," Dr Hunter said. "So there is the very bottom category called 'needs additional support'. The second lowest category is called 'developing' — if your child is in either of those categories smart parents will go and have a chat to their teacher." Glenn Fahey, from the Centre for Independent Studies, agreed that NAPLAN was an especially important warning sign for children whose results were in those two proficiency bands. "This is a code red for your student's achievement in school. Children who start behind and under achieve in NAPLAN have little to no chance of achieving at year level expectations by the time they finish school." Dr Hunter said if a student falls behind in a core curriculum component it could lead to "shame and embarrassment". "It just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, it just really is hard to get them back on track and obviously the expectations is the curriculum ratchets up every single year so if children are struggling to keep up with the curriculum today, they're going to find it even harder next year," she said. That can mean a difficult experience for children as they get older and expectations at school increase. "The other piece of it is psychological. Children do form a view of themselves as they get older about whether or not they are good at learning and whether or not it's worth putting the effort," Dr Hunter said. "We do see quite a bit of masking behaviour so children who perhaps don't feel as confident or as capable in other foundational skills particularly in secondary schools can be a lot easier to act up being the class clown." Research from Australia's independent education research body, the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), found fewer than one in five students who fall behind in Year 3 catch up by Year 9. That's why experts stress the importance of early intervention to ensure the gaps don't grow too wide. Governments are working on introducing earlier testing in Year 1 for both phonics and numeracy to try and pick up students struggling with these basic skills before NAPLAN. Tutoring where students work in small groups to catch up on missed knowledge is also being rolled out as part of a new $16 billion school funding agreement. More immediately, Dr Hunter recommends speaking to your child's teacher. "It's not just those children in the 'needs additional support' category. It's also children in the 'developing' category who are not on track with their learning," she said. "There are things schools can do to make sure that they're giving those children extra opportunities to catch up." Dr Hunter said while classroom teaching was the most important place for catching up, parents could also reinforce lessons at home. Suggestions include reading and simple maths. "I know it sounds old-fashioned but working on timetables at home and addition and subtraction facts is something that you know you can do in the car on the way to the supermarket," Dr Hunter said. "Some parents are a bit nervous about that but parents will improve their maths as well and actually can have a lot of fun playing timetable games with the children." ABC News also prepared a guide for parents concerned about literacy, breaking down the key components of learning to read. For disadvantaged parents — disproportionately represented in the lower NAPLAN bands — the Smith Family runs a program called Learning for Life which helps 71,000 children around Australia with schooling costs. "Parents' financial situations also impact their child. Not every parent and carer can afford the costs of school essentials such as shoes, uniforms, lunch boxes, laptops, excursion fees and stationery," said Smith Family CEO, Doug Taylor. "We know a lack of access to these essentials is impacting many students' academic outcomes, and their social and emotional wellbeing, and has long-term educational consequences." The Smith family said the NAPLAN results were concerning and wanted to see more money flow to early interventions for disadvantaged students. More broadly, many school systems are also changing teaching practices, which experts said was absolutely vital for lifting results. "When a third of students are missing the mark, it's not about individual shortcomings, it's about a system that hasn't kept pace with what we know works. This includes how we prepare teachers for the classroom," said Professor Joanna Barbousas, from La Trobe University. "NAPLAN shows us the same story each year: postcode, culture and privilege still shape opportunity. Until teacher education and policy are reshaped to meet the needs of all communities, the gaps will persist." Experts said those changes are vital but can take three to five years to see results.
West Australian
30-07-2025
- Politics
- West Australian
NAPLAN 2025: WA Education Minister Sabine Winton says teachers facing more students with complex needs
WA Education Minister Sabine Winton has defended WA's performance in NAPLAN, saying teachers were grappling with an increase in primary school children with developmental delays and complex needs. The results, released today, found about one in three children across Australia did not meet the proficiency benchmark, meaning they were unable to read, write or solve maths problems at the basic level for their age. WA's Year 3 performance prompted concerns from education analysts, with 37.6 per cent failing to meet expectations for children their age in reading, and 38.5 per cent failing to meet the proficiency benchmark in numeracy. WA Education Minister Sabine Winton said it was pleasing to see the results remained stable compared to last year, and highlighted improvements in the Year 5, 7 and 9 cohorts from their average scores two years ago. 'And that really is where the power of NAPLAN, from my perspective, lies in terms of assessing improvements made over time,' she said. 'In all of our year levels, that has occurred.' On the Year 3 results, Ms Winton said schools were most focused on the students in the lowest band, who needed additional support. In Year 3 reading, the percentage of students needing additional support increased from 11.3 to 13.9 in two years. She said the WA Government was supporting early intervention through its Phonics Initiative, which includes a requirement introduced in 2023 for all public schools to undertake a Year 1 phonics assessment. The Government has also selected 350 schools to take part in a new small group tuition initiative for students who need extra support. 'We know that if we support and invest in the early years of education, it will have lifelong benefits, and that's why we will continue to drive change that will support that,' she said. 'Whether it's through trialling full time free kindy, providing more supports to schools, and I know personally as a teacher and anecdotally talking to many, many teachers in schools, we are seeing more children in the young years presenting to school with development delays, more complex needs, and that's why our government is investing in early childhood education.' This year marked the third NAPLAN (National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy) under a new reporting system which scores students across four bands; needs additional support, developing, strong and exceeding. Students in the top two bands are considered to have met expectations for their age. Children in the 'developing' band have not met expectations for their age group but are working towards it. Ms Winton said WA's results were on par with the national average. 'I think it's a development that you're seeing right across Australia in terms of children with complex needs, with development delays, all sorts of things happening,' she said. 'We have had the COVID experience, and many kindy teachers tell me that that is also having an impact. So there's something happening at the national level, and I don't accept it's more exposed in Western Australia than anywhere else, but having said that, I accept that it is an area that governments need to continuously invest in.' Ms Winton said there was also a role for parents to play in connecting with teachers and reading to children from an early age. 'We have the conversation about getting back to basics in school, but we also need to get back to basics with our children in our community.' 'It's around, actually, all of us acknowledging there are many, many things that go into that magic pot in a child that then results in them achieving great outcomes in literacy and numeracy testing. 'Schools and the work that teachers do each and every day in their classrooms is critically important, but there is so much more.' Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the national results showed encourage signs but there was more work to do. The Commonwealth has signed a $16 billion agreement with all states and territories to fix school funding, which is tied to reforms such as Year one phonics and numeracy checks. WA is the only State that has not signed up to numeracy checks.
