They’re finally out: NAPLAN results 2024 have been released to the public, and this year they’re telling quite a grim story—
— or not, depending on which headlines you’ve been reading.
Results do show a large-scale literacy problem, widening attainment gaps emerging between boys and girls and Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, and a real dip in achievement as we track down levels of socioeconomic status, but many sources in the sector have been swift to raise objections that shifts in testing patterns have created a false slump in the data. So is this really the unexpected ‘epic fail’ (no, really) that headlines have been citing—or is there more going on under the surface?
...So what are NAPLAN results 2024
really telling us?
In this blog, we’re exploring the ten points that class teachers actually need to know about NAPLAN results 2024 and what policymakers and education experts think.
🍎 #1: NAPLAN results 2024 show that 1 in 3 Australian students are performing below the benchmark in numeracy or literacy. More than 1 in 10 need additional support, with rates slightly increasing as learners get older. There have been some inclines and declines in progress in certain age groups and demographics since 2023’s NAPLAN data,but ACARA notesthat these are on a scale so small that they’re fairly negligible.
🍎 #2: It’s a staggering headline, and one that’s invited commentary from hundreds of political and education sector sources. Jordana Hunter and Nick Parkinson of the Grattan Institute called the results “grim reading” in The Australian Financial Review, with Hunter commenting that “half a million students around the country that are not where we need them to be.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also described the results as “alarming” in a television address to the nation on Wednesday morning, with Shadow Education Minister Sarah Henderson accusing the poor showing as a result of failing to introduce its projected national school reforms.
🍎#3:…But we do need to be careful in how we interpret NAPLAN results 2024. In 2023, some of the processes around NAPLAN changed. This included reporting results in four proficiency levels, rather than the ten bands that were used in NAPLAN 2008-22. Because there are fewer bands now, there are now higher numbers of students in each category, skewing the new results: the ‘lowest band’ is now far larger, so it looks like more learners overall are of the lowest possible standard.
It’s led to some commentators being more optimistic: Steven Gniel, ACARA Chief Executive, described the results as “stable”, pointing out that “National data rarely shows any significant change over a single year.”
🍎 #4: Excellence, however, remains evasive. In Year 3 numeracy, for example, only 10% of learners reached that top proficiency band. These math tests would have included age-appropriate levelled questions like Who is older: someone born in 1988, or someone born in 1998? and How many minutes are there between 3:45 PM and 4:00 PM.
🍎 #5: Testing changes aside, NAPLAN results 2024 do still lay bare some damning educational inequalities in Australia today. Close to 60% of learners in Remote schools failed to meet the standard benchmark. Students from Indigenous backgrounds are twice as likely to fall short of proficiency benchmarks than their non-Indigenous peers, and score notably lower in literacy subjects—one-third of Indigenous students were categorised as “need additional support”, which is three times the national average.
And there seems to be something to be said about the educational culture of the homes that learners hail from too: In Year 3 reading, the gap between learners whose parents didn’t finish school and those whose parents have completed a university bachelor’s degree is about two full years of learning. Previous data indicates that by Year 9, this gap has increased to more than 5 years.
🍎 #6: Girls are outperforming boys in writing but lose that edge in math, according to NAPLAN results 2024. Almost three-quarters of girls in Year 7 scored in the highest band “strong” or “exceeding” in the writing component, whilst only 58% of Year 7 boys scored in the same band. It’s been linked to historic gender trends in boys reading less for pleasure, a lack of which can often result in lower vocabularies and engagement with texts.
In numeracy, 5.9% fewer girls in Year 3 and 6.7% of girls in Year 5 achieved “exceeding” compared to boys.
🍎 #7: Participation rates in 2024 are stable based on 2023’s NAPLAN return. Almost 1.3 million students across more than 9,400 schools and campuses took the NAPLAN assessment program for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in 2024, and data doesn’t reveal much of a fluctuation.
For primary years, participation remained unchanged at 95.1%. For secondary years, it increased from 91.6% to 91.7%. National participation rates ranged from lows of 88.6% in Year 9 numeracy to highs of 95.9% in Year 5 reading.
🍎 #8: Reading attainment drops off in high school, spelling an uphill battle for secondary educators. Across all five assessed domains, results decline at a steady rate: the percentage of students achieving “exceeding” and “strong” in reading decreased from Year 3 (66.3%) to Year 5 (71.4%), then dropped in Year 7 (67.3%) and Year 9 (63.0%). On this point, Nick Parkinson of the Grattan Institute reiterates the impact of the Matthew Effect in education, citing that “Students are more likely to be on track when they’re in primary school, when they’re engaged with school, when their attendance is higher,” and that children struggle more in secondary school, “When the [reading] rich get richer and those who struggle tend to fall a little bit more behind.”
🍎 #9: NAPLAN results 2024 come as the deadline for new public school funding agreement gets closer, and low attainment puts pressure on a successful resolution. So far, only the Northern Territory and Western Australia have reached deals with the Commonwealth and formally accepted its Better and Fairer Schools Agreement.
This is a proposal where the Commonwealth has offered to increase its share of public school funding from 20% to 22.5% to find things like early interventions, evidence-based teaching and additional screening checks, but other states are holding out for a more robust 25%. Both sides have threatened to walk away from the table if a resolution point hasn’t been found by the end of September 2024.
🍎 #10: Unfortunately, there’s still an unhealthy fixation on teachers personally being blamed for lower than desired results. Every year when NAPLAN results come in there’s a media furore where the wheel is spun on which folk devil is blame for that year’s slide, perceived or actual. Usually, that spinner lands on those without the channels to defend themselves: Australia’s classroom teachers.
We teach in an age where ministers take aim at ‘dud’ teachers, questioning their reading and writing ability and describing them as ‘dragging the chain’, and a quick look at social media on the day of the data release indicates that NAPLAN results 2024 have increased the number of negative mentions of teachers by a huge amount. Some seem to forget that that under-resourcing, curriculum clashes, testing shifts and post-pandemic skill degradation aren’t personal failings on the part of Australia’s teachers, who are in class every day trying to help learners navigate an increasingly slippery slope—these effects are part of a much bigger picture, all to do with funding, screening, inequalities and training.
At Scanning Pens, we know that educators are our best defence against skill slide and the most important resource students have at their disposal when it comes to overcoming reading needs. And we want to help teachers across Australia support the learners in their care toward academic success, higher NAPLAN results next time around, and a brighter learning and working future for all—because we know what’s at stake for a whole generation of learners if they leave school without the reading skills they need in order to succeed.
To find out how text-to-speech reading pens can support your students under different exam boards, check out our blog: Which exam boards will let me use a reading pen?
…Don’t believe the hype yet, or wondering how it’ll all work in your classroom? Claim your FREE reading pen trial at our Educator Trials page!
Attention Teachers!
Don’t miss out on our Learning Support Forum! 🎉
Join us for an exciting event featuring 4 expert speakers diving into education, learning differences, and student mental health.
Register now to catch it live or on-demand — empower your students with the knowledge they need! 📚💡
