Proportion of students meeting national minimum standards flatlined or declined across most year groups since last year

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Students from families with lower education levels are as far as four years behind their better-off peers when it comes to reading and writing, and the gaps have widened since 2008, according to an analysis of the latest Naplan test score results.

The results, published on Wednesday, show that the proportion of students meeting national minimum standards either flatlined or declined across most year groups since last year, while average reading and numeracy skills of Australian primary students have improved only slightly since the tests were introduced a decade ago.

The results prompted a stern response from the federal education minister, Simon Birmingham, who called them a “wake-up call” and used them to encourage state education ministers to accept his push for a mandatory phonics check for year one students.

Vocational education funding at lowest level in a decade, report says Read more

“The Turnbull government’s proposed year 1 phonics checks are just one example of tools that can help educators to identify and give extra support to those who need it to stop them falling behind the pack,” he said on Wednesday.

But the former Productivity Commission economist and convenor of public education lobby group Save Our Schools, Trevor Cobbold, said the scores also provided a snapshot of entrenched disadvantage in the school system.

Students whose parents had higher levels of education scored higher across the board, with children of parents who hold a bachelor degree or higher having the highest mean scale scores and the greatest percentage of students who achieved at or above the national minimum standard.

But Cobbold published data that he said showed that so-called “achievement gaps” between year 5 students with high and poorly educated parents in 2017 amounted to more than two-and-a-half years of learning in reading and about two years in writing and numeracy.



The gaps were worse in year 9, where it is about four years in reading and numeracy and four-and-a-half years in writing.

In year 5, one year of learning is equivalent to about 35-40 points on the Naplan scale and in year 9 one year of learning is equivalent to about 20 points.

Cobbold said the evidence of “stagnant or declining results” for students from poorly educated families were “massive gaps in learning”.



He said the “increasing gaps between them and students from high educated families” reflected a “longstanding failure of governments to adequately support these students”.

“Average results for students from low income families have been stagnant or declining,” he said. “Year 5 reading and numeracy results are largely unchanged since 2008, while writing has declined significantly since 2011.

“Year 9 reading has declined by over six months learning since 2008 while there was little change in numeracy. Year 9 writing declined by over a year of learning.”

Naplan scores: Australia's civics education 'woeful', minister says Read more

Cobbold is a vocal critic of the government’s Gonski 2.0 reforms, which he says favour private schools because they commit the majority of commonwealth funding to private and catholic schools while capping the contribution to public schools at 20% of the schooling resource standard.

Last week Cobbold’s analysis of figures obtained by the Australian Education Union revealed that unless the states cut their contribution to private schools, 184 schools in New South Wales and Victoria alone would receive more than 100% of their resourcing under the new funding arrangements.

“Funding increases over the past decade have been badly misdirected,” he said.

Birmingham oversaw the passage of the Gonski 2.0 funding deal, despite opposition from Labor, and he said it would mean the government committing $25m over the next decade.



After its passage, he commissioned David Gonski and a panel of education experts to report on how the extra funding should be spent, which he said on Wednesday would provide “practical advice to schools on how they can make sure it is being used as effectively as possible”.