NAPLAN and Lockdowns 

Sir: Covid-induced school lockdowns were expected to have a negative effect on children’s and teenagers’ NAPLAN results. Concern appears to be greatest among parents of six- to twelve-year-olds, because parents doubt their ability to home-school them successfully during their important formative years. Teenagers, on the other hand, could follow lessons and complete assignments online in most circumstances and may have been little affected.

To examine these conjectures, I checked on the official Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority website (nap.edu.au) for the NAPLAN results nationally and also the results for Victoria, which had the longest lockdown. I compared the results for May 2018 (before the pandemic) and May 2021 (two years into the pandemic) and focused on the results for Year 3, the youngest children tested in NAPLAN, and the results for Year 9, the oldest children tested in NAPLAN and the stage at which they have participated every three years, apart from last year due to Covid, in the international program of PISA testing, about which I’ll have more to say at the end of this letter.

The subjects of most interest are Numeracy (arithmetic in primary school and mathematics in high school), Reading (English text comprehension, commonly called literacy), and, one could argue, to a lesser extent in relation to the hard sciences, Writing (English composition). The mean or average scores for 2018 and 2021 show almost exactly the same percentage changes as the percentage meeting the national minimum standard, which is to be expected given that NAPLAN scores are normally distributed, and the latter is the statistic that should most concern policy-makers.

The Year 3 children, remarkably, were unaffected during Covid. There was no decline in the percentage of children meeting the minimum national standard in Numeracy, which held at 95 per cent both years nationally and 96 per cent both years in Victoria. Nor was there any decline in the percentage of Year 3 children meeting the minimum national standard in Reading (basic ability to understand written English), which also held at 95 per cent nationally and 96 per cent in Victoria. Year 3 children actually showed a slight improvement in Writing (basically copying and simple story-writing), from 94 per cent to 96 per cent nationally and 95 per cent to 96 per cent in Victoria. Overall, therefore, and contrary to common expectation, there was no effect of lockdowns on our supposedly vulnerable young. 

The Year 9 students were differently affected in the three main NAPLAN subjects during Covid. The percentage of these students meeting the minimum national standard in Numeracy in 2018 and 2021 held at 95 per cent nationally and fell only slightly from 95 per cent down to 94 per cent in Victoria. Reading (English text comprehension) at Year 9 did, however, suffer noticeably, with 94 per cent down to 91 per cent nationally meeting the minimum standard and 93 per cent down to 89 per cent in Victoria. Writing at Year 9 (English composition), on the other hand, as it did for the younger children, improved slightly, with 83 per cent rising to 85 per cent nationally meeting the minimum standard; whereas in Victoria, where more learning was presumably done online, the percentage meeting the minimum national standard increased from an already low 79 per cent—somewhat more children of migrants from non-English-speaking countries, perhaps—to a still relatively low 82 per cent, with both figures being 3 per cent below the national average. Overall, the only real worry is with Reading, and one hopes that two years back at school will restore this in time for final-year exams. 

One might ask whether our least able Year 9 students—those in the Northern Territory—had their NAPLAN scores affected by the lockdown. The figures show that they suffered severely in Numeracy, with the percentage meeting the minimum national standard falling from 78 per cent in 2018 to 71 per cent in 2021. On the other hand, the unfortunately low levels of Year 9 Reading and Writing in the Northern Territory were not affected any more than they were nationally, falling 2 per cent from an already low 65 per cent down to 63 per cent for Reading, and actually increasing slightly by 2 per cent, from a very low 48 per cent to 50 per cent, for Writing. 

Lastly, I believe it is important to draw readers’ attention to my Quadrant article of May 2020, titled “Drop PISA, Keep NAPLAN”, in which I argued that NAPLAN provides the most objective achievement testing possible and that the Australian government, operating through the questionable and outdated Australian Council for Educational Research, should stop shelling out taxpayers’ money to participate in the badly flawed PISA testing program, scheduled for this year and again in 2025. NAPLAN numeracy and literacy tests at Year 9 are closely modelled on the US Scholastic Aptitude Test, the test most widely used worldwide for college and university entry. NAPLAN-style practice test booklets are readily available at newsagents so that their content is completely open to scrutiny, whereas PISA tests are “black box”, the contents of which change each time the test is offered.

John R. Rossiter