2010 NAPLAN - Full report released

The Chair of the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, Martin Dixon, today released the full set of results from the 2010 national literacy and numeracy tests (NAPLAN)  conducted across Australia in May last year.

The report includes a breakdown of student results by Indigenous status, language background other than English and for students living in metropolitan, country and remote areas.

The report also provides information on the comparative performance of girls and boys and a breakdown of student results by parental occupation and parental education. The NAPLAN Summary Report, released on 10 September 2010, provided the overall results.

2010 was the third year of NAPLAN testing. With the 2010 results it is now possible to directly compare national literacy and numeracy test results for the same cohorts of students. Results for students in Years 5, 7 and 9 in 2010 can be compared directly with their 2008 results in Years 3, 5 and 7.

The results show that:

• Nationally, Indigenous students have shown improvements since 2008 in Year 3 Reading and Year 7 Reading and Spelling, but no improvements in other year levels or domains and there is still a significant gap between the performance of Indigenous students and non-Indigenous students.
   
• There are more girls than boys working at or above the minimum standard in all the literacy domains at every year level and in numeracy at Year 3. In Years 5 and 7, the numeracy results for girls and boys are similar. Year 9 numeracy is the only instance where there are more boys at or above the minimum standard.
   
• Although there is a marked variation between jurisdictions, overall the mean scores of students from language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE) exceed the mean scores of non-LBOTE students in Writing, Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation and Numeracy. However the mean score for non-LBOTE students is higher than that for LBOTE students in Reading.
   
• The influence of geographic location and parental education and occupation can be seen at all levels and in all domains. Fewer students from remote areas are working at or above the minimum standard, while those whose parents are university educated or whose parents are from the occupational category “senior management and qualified professionals” are more likely to be at or above the standard.