New NAPLAN data shows Australian student achievement has remained broadly stable across all domains, with a ‘slight bright spot’ to note at the secondary level.
Two thirds of students are achieving at the ‘strong’ or ‘exceeding’ proficiency level for numeracy, reading and writing skills.
Numeracy results lifted slightly across Years 5, 7 and 9 – the first time since 2017 that this has occured across all three cohorts.
Minor improvements were also seen for Years 5, 7 and 9 in reading.
But some commentators warn that another year of similar results, and the persistent equity gaps, are clear evidence of a schooling system ‘stuck in neutral’ despite record levels of government funding.
Research fellow Trisha Jha from the Centre for Independent Studies says while there is a positive in the fact that NAPLAN results appear to be stabilising, if you zoom out and consider the wider policy scene, it “becomes much harder to call [the results] a good news story”.
“For the levels of input that we’ve seen into the system, we would expect to see an improvement in outcomes, particularly for the most disadvantaged students, which was obviously what things like Gonski and the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement now have all been about.
“And those gaps have not really been shown to be shifting,” Jha, a former secondary teacher, tells EducationHQ.
The new data shows one in 10 students are in need of additional support across all year groups and domains, with a significantly higher proportion of Indigenous students falling into this category.
Jha contends that achievement has not kept pace with per student public funding, which has effectively doubled since 2008 and now rests at around $21,000 per student.
Why this is the case is the “billion dollar question”, she says.
“The clearest conclusion to draw is that the system hasn’t really been able to direct money towards the right things.
“Part of the reason, I think, that it’s struggled to direct money into directions where it’s actually been effective is that there’s actually been a lack of knowledge for quite some time that’s built up within the industry, and within the profession, about what is actually needed to lift student achievement,” Jha proposes.
Best practice left to chance
While it is “really positive” to see a stronger emphasis on the science of learning and explicit teaching take hold, from the Strong Beginnings report and across multiple public and non-government school systems, the re-discovery of this body of knowledge has been haphazard and mostly grown momentum by chance, Jha argues.
“This discovery really remains selective, it’s almost accidental the way that teachers have stumbled upon it.
“My research shows that in order to scale the science of learning, you have to recognise that the way that those practices have spread thus far has been largely by accident, from teachers kind of stumbling across it and then deciding that this is something that really works and that they want to learn more about it.”
Grassroots success stories have prompted shifts in the minds of policymakers, which has resulted in some encouraging changes at scale – but the task of bringing an entire profession of roughly 300,000 teachers up to speed on evidence-aligned practice is no easy or quick task, Jha says.
Secondary outcomes a success story
However, promising results at Years 7 and 9 are one of the encouraging stories to come out of the new NAPLAN data, Jha notes.
In reading, 68.2 per cent of students achieved at ‘Exceeding’ and ‘Strong’ levels (compared to 67 per cent in 2024), increasing from Year 3 (65.7 per cent) to Year 5 (72.9 per cent), then dropping in Year 7 (69 per cent) and in Year 9 (65.1 per cent).
In 2025, some 9.3 per cent of students need additional support with reading (compared to 10.3 per cent in 2024), decreasing from Year 3 (10.8 per cent) to Year 5 (7.5 per cent), and increasing in Year 7 (8.9 per cent) and Year 9 (9.8 per cent).
“Secondary school outcomes have typically been pretty hard to lift because the gaps tend to be larger, and the students tend to be further behind, and (secondary) teachers aren’t necessarily skilled in trying to remediate those learning gaps...
“One of the things that is quite encouraging, is that with Year 7 and Year 9 reading, there has been a slight improvement in the proportion of students in that top band, the ‘Exceeding’ band, and that hasn’t come at the expense of increases at the bottom.
“Ideally, we would want to see that [bottom cohort of low achievers] shrinking and the top growing as well, but at least what we do have is that top band increasing ever so slightly – and increasing for numeracy as well, without that bottom band necessarily going backwards,” Jha says.
ACARA CEO Stephen Gniel says the results “highlight areas that need collective attention”, such as supporting students from regional and remote areas, those from disadvantaged backgrounds and Indigenous students.
“It’s encouraging to see higher NAPLAN scores on average across Years 5, 7 and 9 in numeracy, particularly among the stronger students,” Gniel says.
“These may be small percentage changes, but the increases represent an additional 20,000 Australian students performing at the highest proficiency level ... in 2025 compared to 2024,” Gniel adds.
“Another emerging trend is the increase since 2023 in the percentage of Indigenous students achieving ‘exceeding’ in writing and numeracy at both Years 7 and 9. Hopefully, these gains – and others like them – can be consolidated in 2026 and beyond.”
Call for reform
Girls continue to outperform boys in literacy, particularly in writing, while in numeracy boys continue to outperform girls, with the difference most pronounced for higher achieving students.
Higher levels of parental education and occupation also continue to be linked with higher student achievement across all testing domains.
Governments have “tried spending their way to school improvement,” but this approach had reached its limits, Jha argues.
Instead, a rigorous review of the Australian curriculum and the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers are needed to lift results, she says.
“One of the concerns is that at the moment we have an Australian curriculum, but in no sense do we have really a national curriculum.
“I think the national curriculum should set a minimum standard for what students should know and be able to do.
“At the moment it is in need of significant reform to emphasise knowledge, [we] probably need to remove some of the general capabilities and the cross-curriculum priorities to focus on the domain-specific knowledge; making sure that knowledge is organised sequentially and carefully, and just making sure that it aligns with what we know about the best evidence about effective curriculum.”
The professional standards for Australian teachers are also letting us down, Jha says.
“…at present [they are] really not aligned well with the science of learning expectations and policy directions that are being set down in the Strong Beginnings report and that have been agreed to by the ministers.
“I think that it’s very hard to upskill a profession if you can’t be clear about what the standards should be.”
Education Minister Jason Clare says the improvement in literacy and numeracy results are good news, but urges there is “more work to do”.
“That’s what the new agreements we’ve now signed with every state and territory are all about,” he says.
“These agreements fix the funding of our public schools.
“They’re the biggest investment by the Australian Government in public schools ever.”
Clare re-emphasised that the funding was “not a blank cheque” and was tied to practical reforms.
“These reforms are now starting to roll out.
“Phonics checks and numeracy checks to identify students who need additional support, and evidence-based teaching and catch-up tutoring to help them keep up and catch up.”
NAPLAN participation rates have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, with 1.3 million students sitting the tests in early March – equivalent to 93.8 per cent of students.
This includes Queensland students, who sat their tests in the days after Cyclone Alfred struck and still recorded the highest participation rates since 2019.
School-level NAPLAN results are due to be released in December.
