Five things we wouldn't know without NAPLAN

NAPLAN, the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy, has been a prominent part of Australia's education landscape since 2008, when it was introduced by then education minister Julia Gillard. For example, using NAPLAN: policy makers and researchers can better understand student performance, to inform system-wide policies, support and resource allocation for schools teachers can use the data as a diagnostic tool to improve teaching in the classroom parents can make more informed choices about where to send their children via the My School website, which publishes school-level results parents have more information about how their child is progressing relative to others. At a national level, Year 9 Indigenous students are on average three years behind non-Indigenous students in numeracy, 3.4 years behind in reading, and 4.2 years behind in writing. But the Indigenous gap is so large that no fancy mathematics is needed: Year 9 Indigenous students scored on average 465 in NAPLAN writing in 2017, below the 480 non-Indigenous students scored in Year 5. Relative to the rest of Australia, Queensland has increased its Year 3 numeracy and reading scores by three to four months since 2010 It's interesting to note 2010 was the first NAPLAN cohort where Queensland students started school with a prep year.