One-third of Australian students are not meeting "challenging but reasonable" expectations in literacy and numeracy in what experts are warning is "stagnant" underperformance.
About 10 per cent of students are so far behind their peers they need additional support to catch up to the two-thirds of students who met or exceeded expectations.
"My personal view is that I'm very concerned. My colleague called it a national tragedy," Professor Tanya Serry from La Trobe University said.
"The reason it can be considered a national tragedy is the research evidence tells us we should be seeing about 90–95 per cent of students learning to read."
Professor Serry said it was the fourth straight year, since tougher marking was introduced in 2023, that NAPLAN tests have shown hundreds of thousands of students not meeting the mark.
"This is not a statistic that we can be comfortable with,"
Professor Serry said.
Blaise Joseph says NAPLAN tests fundamental skills, crucial for later learning. (ABC News: Scott Preston)
Blaise Joseph, a former teacher and education analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) called for urgent action, noting NAPLAN tested the basic skills needed for later learning.
"It's really imperative at this point that we find a way to get them up to the standard, so they've got those fundamental literacy and numeracy skills," Mr Joseph said.
"Those skills are so crucial for later life. All your learning is based on those foundations of literacy and numeracy."
How useful are NAPLAN test results?
The worth of NAPLAN is debated every year, with some critics in academia as well as education unions calling for the test to be scrapped, questioning its relevance.
Sally Larsen from the University of New England said the test was useful as a "national snapshot" but cautioned against putting too much stock "in any one test".
"Individual NAPLAN scores aren't exact measures of students' ability and other factors can affect the results they get in any one test," Dr Larsen said.
"These might include how students feel on the test day — are they feeling unwell or stressed about other things in their lives?"
NAPLAN provides a snapshot of student performance across the country. (ABC News: Cath McAloon)
However, ACARA said it was important as the only national assessment that was comparable for all students across the country.
"The first question that would be asked if we didn't have this, is why don't we know where our students are up to?" ACARA chief executive Stephen Gniel said.
"After all, those results are about our children, they're about the leaders of tomorrow."
The results again showed students from Indigenous backgrounds, lower socio-economic families and those from the bush were much more likely to need additional support.
"There's a very big inequity in Australia, between students from more advantaged backgrounds and students from less advantaged backgrounds, and that's concerning," Mr Joseph said.
Mr Gniel said while NAPLAN did not identify why these concerning trends were happening, it showed policymakers areas where they should be focusing.
"It is disheartening to see disparities persisting over the years in the attainment of students from our regional and remote areas, Indigenous students and those from a disadvantaged background," Mr Gniel said.
Some wins for years 5, 7 and 9
Mr Gniel said this year's results showed some good news in numeracy in years 5, 7 and 9 with an extra 29,000 students in the exceeding category compared to 2023 results.
Stephen Gniel says NAPLAN results give education policymakers an indication of where they should focus efforts. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)
"This is something we want to celebrate, and we want teachers to really reflect on the good practice that's happening there," Mr Gniel said.
However, the results showed students in year 3 recorded their lowest numeracy scores since 2023, and experts cautioned the rise in senior years was very small.
"That's always a good thing, you do have to squint to see it though, it's a relatively small increase so I don't think we'd want to read too much into that," Mr Joseph said.
Education Minister Jason Clare welcomed the lift in numeracy but said the results showed more work was needed.
"There is good news here in numeracy. It's going up and up in year 5 and in high school," Mr Clare said.
"Year 3 maths is a different story. That's why we are fixing the maths curriculum for the first three years of school."
Phonics linked to schools with improved literacy
Mr Clare said work was also needed in literacy and pointed to changes in teaching practice being rolled out nationally, as well as increased public-school funding.
"The reading results show we still have real challenges. They also show us how to fix them," Mr Clare said.
"This year's results show that in schools using explicit teaching methods, including phonics, and small-group tutoring to give kids who are struggling extra intensive help, results are going up and up."
Dr Larsen cautioned against making changes to teaching practice solely because of NAPLAN.
"I think there is rarely a justification to completely overhaul a school's teaching program based on one year's NAPLAN results," Dr Larsen said.
"If schools are making big changes to their teaching, they need to use more than one approach when evaluating the impacts of these changes."
Female students again outperformed male students in literacy with male students similarly outperforming female students in numeracy.
ACARA said the gender gap had been in the data for "many a year" and required further investigation.
Female students outperformed males in literacy, while males scored higher than females in numeracy. (ABC News: Cath McAloon)
"There's a parliamentary inquiry into these disparities between male and female students and it's really important that we do a deep dive in this," Mr Gniel said.
Students from Language Backgrounds Other than English (LBOTE) again outperformed their peers.
"We're actually the only country in the OECD where that's the case," Mr Joseph said.
"So, there's a lot of evidence to suggest students from immigrant backgrounds and language backgrounds other than English are really carrying the team at the moment."
Individual students have already received their NAPLAN scores and parents can expect to see the overall score for their school toward the end of the year.
