Stagnating literacy and numeracy levels have fuelled calls for an urgent increase in funding as test results reveal about one-tenth of students need help to meet basic standards.
While two-thirds of Australian primary and high school students performed well in latest NAPLAN testing, children in remote areas and from disadvantaged families continue to lag behind their peers.
Girls again outperformed boys in literacy but boys did better in numeracy, with the gaps emerging in early secondary and late primary school, according to results released on Wednesday 30 July.
The Grattan Institute’s Amy Haywood said teachers and schools needed the benefit of greater investment to provide practical support to students.
“The results can be sobering … we should be asking governments what they are doing to support teachers,” she told AAP.
“A teacher working on their own can’t do the impossible. They need support from government.”
Ms Haywood, who previously worked as a secondary teacher, said it would be incredibly difficult to provide ongoing support to the growing number of students who are falling behind.
“If you keep falling behind, it’s harder to catch-up as you go through school. That has a flow-on impact.”
Education Minister Jason Clare acknowledged there was more work to do to improve results.
He said the federal government had committed to the biggest investment in public schools in Australian history, worth $16 billion over the next 10 years.
The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, which runs the annual tests, said results in all subjects were relatively stable.
But Indigenous students, as well as children in remote and rural areas, remained well behind, prompting a call for “collective action” to help struggling pupils.
Ms Haywood said the results were concerning, although the figures had differed little in the past three years.
“It’s worrying that one in three school students are still falling short of that proficiency benchmark in literacy and numeracy,” she said.
Just one in five students in very remote areas had results that were considered strong or exceeding expectations – far below the 70 per cent of students in major cities who achieved the same rankings.
Almost one-third of Indigenous students fell below minimum standards and needed extra support, compared to less than one in 10 non-Indigenous students.
Centre for Independent Studies education research fellow Trisha Jha said an improvement in the results was likely, although it would take time.
“We’ve got instructional models and approaches to teaching and curriculum that are becoming more aligned with evidence,” she said.
“Those are really positive changes but the biggest problem is that it’s going to take a long time for the impact of those policies to be felt on students at a classroom level.”
Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Justin Mullaly called for additional public school funding, saying staff felt undervalued.
“There is no doubt we’re putting the outcomes we need from our children and young people as they go through school in jeopardy unless we fund our schools properly,” he said.
The NAPLAN results released on Wednesday did not give reasons behind the trends, while a school-by-school breakdown will be released later in the year.
Participation rates have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels as 1.3 million students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sat the tests in early March – equivalent to 93.8 per cent of pupils.
