The 2018 NAPLAN National Report has been released, showing significant gains in several domains and year levels, particularly at the primary school level.
The majority of students took NAPLAN on paper while nationally approximately 15% of students sat the test online, with variances to this figure in each state and territory.
Compared with 2008, the performance of Australian students in Years 5 and 9 – numeracy, Years 3 and 5 – reading, Years 3 and 5 – spelling, and Years 3 and 7 – grammar was significantly above the NAPLAN 2008 average.
While writing test results in Years 5, 7 and 9 were below those observed in the base year (2011) ACARA CEO, David de Carvalho, said that compared with 2017 results, there were no “statistically significant” changes in any of the NAPLAN test domains.
Achievement in reading, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy by Indigenous students, non-English speaking students and the two genders more broadly saw promising gains compared with the test’s data from 2008.
The latest report revealed “significant cumulative gains” in some domains and year levels for Indigenous students, including reading in Years 3 and 5, spelling in Years 3 and 5, grammar and punctuation in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 and numeracy in Years 3, 5 and 9.
Students with language background other than English (LBOTE), improved in the areas of reading in Years 3 and 5, grammar and punctuation in Years 3 and 7, spelling in Years 3 and 5 and numeracy in Year 5.
Female students saw big improvements in spelling, grammar and punctuation and numeracy, with gains in reading (Years 3 and 5), spelling (Year 5), grammar and punctuation (Year 3) and numeracy (Years 5 and 9).
Similarly, there were also some significant gains in some domains and year levels for male students, including reading (Years 3 and 5), spelling (Years 3 and 5), grammar and punctuation (Year 3 and 7) and numeracy (Year 5 and 9).
In total, there were 68 test incidents substantiated in 2018, of which one was cheating, 20 were a security breach and 47 were a ‘general breach’. For comparison, there were 69 test incidents in 2017.
However, de Carvalho, said the number of reported test incidents is extremely small and does not affect overall NAPLAN results.