NAPLAN is a low bar.

Andy Mison, President and Executive Director, Australian Secondary Principals’ Association

The 2026 NAPLAN national results were released on 5 August (ACARA, 2026). I do not intend to add to the annual commentary about where the scale points moved. Movements of a few points across a national cohort tell an individual school or student very little, and the yearly cycle of that commentary has not substantially advanced equity and/or excellence in two decades.

One finding has been stable across the whole life of the program. Where a child lives and what their family earns still predicts their result. National testing has diagnosed that pattern repeatedly. The question worth asking is which policy drivers are most likely to finally address that reality, and whether the settings we currently prioritise are among them?

Limited....

NAPLAN assesses two domains at four year levels on a few mornings in March. It carries no measure of the sciences, the arts, technologies, humanities and social sciences, languages, health and physical education, or vocational learning. There is no consideration of the higher order critical, creative and adaptive competencies the OECD and industry tells us will be critical in decades to come. It carries no measure of engagement, retention, wellbeing, senior secondary completion or transition beyond school. Those are also the outcomes that determine what a young person can do next.

The instrument was designed to give teachers and systems diagnostic information about literacy and numeracy progress on a common national scale. It does that job. It has since driven a great deal more than it was built for, including simplistic judgements about school quality and, increasingly, about the effect of particular teaching practices. Aggregate national movement cannot isolate the effect of any single practice or programme, because the dataset does not record which schools use which approaches and the students showing movement were taught across many years and many settings. Where causal claims of that kind are made, the supporting analysis should be published, and reform initiatives should be evaluated through instruments designed for the purpose.

What happens when a narrow measure becomes the headline

The international literature is consistent on this. Dee and Jacob (2010) documented the reallocation of instructional time toward the tested subjects under No Child Left Behind. Jennings and Bearak (2014) found that teachers respond to predictable test features by concentrating on the standards most frequently assessed, with a stronger response where accountability pressure is greater. Koretz (2008, 2017) describes the resulting score inflation, where results rise faster than the learning they represent, and identifies incomplete measurement of desired outcomes as the root cause.

Australian research reports the same pattern. Thompson and Harbaugh (2013), surveying teachers in Western Australia and South Australia, found teachers either choosing or being instructed to teach to the test, with less time spent on other curriculum areas and negative effects on student engagement. Polesel, Rice and Dulfer (2014) reached similar conclusions. In a national survey of approximately 8,500 educators, Dulfer, Polesel and Rice (2012) recorded narrowing of curriculum and teaching strategies, along with effects on student wellbeing and on staff morale. More recent work finds the pattern has not lifted with time. Daliri-Ngametua, Wescott and McKay (2024), examining Queensland primary and secondary schools, describe accountability, comparison and curriculum narrowing as now embedded features of ordinary school practice and of school-level resource decisions, to the point where they are difficult to separate from teaching work itself.

The workforce and equity consequences

The Dulfer, Polesel and Rice (2012) survey also identified perceived effects on schools’ capacity to attract and retain both students and staff. That finding deserves particular weight. The international evidence points the same way. Jerrim and Sims (2022), analysing OECD TALIS data from more than 100,000 teachers across over 40 systems, found a modest positive association between system accountability and teacher stress, with considerable variation between systems. Ryan and colleagues (2017) found that the intensity of test-based accountability predicted higher stress, burnout and turnover intent.

Workforce supply is the binding constraint on almost everything the sector is asked to deliver. A driver that lifts a reported number while increasing attrition, or while discouraging teachers from working in the schools of greatest need, produces no net gain.

The effects are also distributed unevenly. Public reporting at school level operates in a system with substantial school choice, and it attaches the sharpest reputational consequence to schools serving communities with concentrated disadvantage, for results that reflect intake as much as instruction. Where that consequence shapes enrolment, enrolment shapes composition, and composition shapes the capacity to attract staff, the mechanism becomes self-reinforcing. Residualisation concentrates need in the schools with the least capacity to absorb it. The Productivity Commission (2022) found that the gap between students from priority equity cohorts and their peers widens as students move through schooling, rather than narrowing.

The design question

Australia combines census testing, public reporting at school level and open school choice. That combination might be less common among high-performing systems than the testing itself. Estonia monitors national progress using a ten per cent sample at the end of grades three and six, with no consequences attached for students or schools, and reserves formal examination for the end of basic education (NCEE, n.d.). Finland evaluates learning outcomes in basic education by sampling rather than by testing every student, and the results are not used to rank schools (FINEEC, n.d.). The 2020 NAPLAN Review examined sample rather than census administration, and reducing or removing school-level display on My School, alongside changes to content and timing (McGaw, Louden & Wyatt-Smith, 2020). Ministers proceeded with the timing and reporting improvements, and the accountability architecture was left largely as it was. If you look at the table on page 12 of that report you can infer an appetite for perpetuating league tables in that choice.

A vehicle for revising the framework already exists. The Better and Fairer Schools Agreement 2025–2034 commits every government to a review of the Measurement Framework for Schooling in Australia as one of five National Enabling Initiatives, with implementation a condition of Commonwealth funding. Clause 88(d) directs the review to consider the range of student level outcome data collected, how that data is disaggregated, and possible new and updated measures. It names four candidates for costs and benefits analysis: a new measure of student engagement, a new equity in learning gain measure to capture student learning growth, national measures of access, participation and outcomes for students with disability, and an extension of the Australian Teacher Workforce Dataset to cover early career retention and diversity, and of the Australian Teacher Workforce Survey to cover out-of-field teaching (Department of Education, 2024). The review is directed to give primacy to any impact on teacher workload when weighing those measures. That test is the right one, and it should apply with equal force to the measurement and reporting load schools already manage. Schedule B sets the milestones for this work, with Education Ministers to receive a final report no later than early 2027 and to consider revisions to the Framework no later than mid-2027. The scope of that review is still to be settled, and the case for widening it should be made now.

What should drive the debate

ASPA proposes four things for consideration.

1. Fund to the standard. Complete and sustain the path to the Schooling Resource Standard for every public school, and require the highest standards of accountability for all in receipt of public money. Report publicly against those commitments, including transparency on how the dollars are deployed within systems.

2. Measure the whole of what schools do. Bring curriculum and capability breadth, student agency, engagement, senior secondary completion and post-school transition into national reporting alongside literacy and numeracy, and give effect to the Productivity Commission’s (2022) recommendation to add student wellbeing as a national outcome. Student engagement is already in scope for the Measurement Framework review. Curriculum & capability breadth and post-school transition are not, and should be.

3. Judge the system on equity. Assess national performance on whether the gaps between the most and least advantaged students are closing, rather than on movement in aggregate averages. An equity in learning gain measure is already named in scope for that review, and should be adopted.

4. Invest in professional capability and trust. Give principals and teachers stengthend capacity and explicit latitude to use diagnostic data locally, which is the only place it changes practice.
   

ASPA supports good data and supports NAPLAN as one diagnostic input among several. The objection is to a narrow instrument serving as the headline measure of a broad public good, and to the policy attention that follows the headline rather than the problem. The profession is doing serious work on literacy and numeracy and will continue doing it whatever the annual cycle produces. What it needs is the resourcing to do that work in every school, and a measurement framework that reflects what schools are actually for.

References

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2026). NAPLAN national results. https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/naplan-national-results 

Daliri-Ngametua, R., Wescott, S., & McKay, A. (2024). On the uses and use of NAPLAN: The hidden effects of test-based data-centric accountabilities. Journal of Education Policy, 39(6), 843–860. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2023.2273499 

Dee, T. S., & Jacob, B. A. (2010). The impact of No Child Left Behind on students, teachers, and schools. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2010(2), 149–207. https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2010.0014 

Department of Education. (2024). Better and Fairer Schools Agreement 2025–2034: Heads of agreement. Australian Government. https://www.education.gov.au/recurrent-funding-schools/national-school-reform-agreement/better-and-fairer-schools-agreement-20252034 

Dulfer, N., Polesel, J., & Rice, S. (2012). The experience of education: The impacts of high stakes testing on school students and their families – An educator’s perspective. Whitlam Institute, University of Western Sydney. https://www.whitlam.org/publications/2017/10/17/the-experience-of-education-the-impacts-of-high-stakes-testing-on-school-students-and-their-families 

Finnish Education Evaluation Centre. (n.d.). Learning outcomes evaluations. Retrieved 10 August 2026, from https://www.karvi.fi/en/evaluations/pre-primary-primary-and-lower-secondary-education/learning-outcomes-evaluations 

Jennings, J. L., & Bearak, J. M. (2014). “Teaching to the test” in the NCLB era: How test predictability affects our understanding of student performance. Educational Researcher, 43(8), 381–389. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X14554449 

Jerrim, J., Sims, S. School accountability and teacher stress: international evidence from the OECD TALIS study. Educ Asse Eval Acc 34, 5–32 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-021-09360-0

Koretz, D. (2008). Measuring up: What educational testing really tells us. Harvard University Press.

Koretz, D. (2017). The testing charade: Pretending to make schools better. University of Chicago Press.

McGaw, B., Louden, W., & Wyatt-Smith, C. (2020). NAPLAN review final report. NSW Department of Education, on behalf of the ACT, NSW, Queensland and Victorian governments. https://naplanreview.com.au/pdfs/2020_NAPLAN_review_final_report.pdf 

National Center on Education and the Economy. (n.d.). Estonia. Retrieved 6 August 2026, from https://ncee.org/estonia/ 

Polesel, J., Rice, S., & Dulfer, N. (2014). The impact of high-stakes testing on curriculum and pedagogy: A teacher perspective from Australia. Journal of Education Policy, 29(5), 640–657. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2013.865082 

Productivity Commission. (2022). Review of the National School Reform Agreement: Study report. Australian Government. https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries-and-research/school-agreement/report 

Ryan, S. V., von der Embse, N. P., Pendergast, L. L., Saeki, E., Segool, N., & Schwing, S. (2017). Leaving the teaching profession: The role of teacher stress and educational accountability policies on turnover intent. Teaching and Teacher Education, 66, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.03.016 

Thompson, G., & Harbaugh, A. G. (2013). A preliminary analysis of teacher perceptions of the effects of NAPLAN on pedagogy and curriculum. The Australian Educational Researcher, 40(3), 299–314. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-013-0093-0