NAPLAN Obscures Systemic Inequities

Yesterday’s release of the 2025 NAPLAN National Results provides some modest cause for encouragement, with two-thirds of students achieving at “Strong” or “Exceeding” proficiency levels. But for those working in schools every day, the deeper story remains painfully familiar: persistent achievement gaps that mirror the broader inequities in our society.

Education systems reflect the inequities of the society they operate within. If we’re serious about closing these gaps, we need to stop looking only inside the classroom and start confronting the structural barriers that define the lives of many of our students. It’s surely time to prioritise public expenditure that supports and resources schools based on equity, not uniformity.

Rejecting the ‘Teacher-Blame’ Cycle

Every year, the release of NAPLAN results is followed by a tired and damaging narrative that implies teachers are to blame for perceived shortcomings. I reject that narrative entirely.

Teachers are not failing students. Students and families are being failed by systems that treat equity as optional, and by policy settings that ignore the lived realities of disadvantage. For too long, NAPLAN has been used as a blunt instrument to manufacture crisis headlines, feeding a cycle that demoralises educators and distracts from real, systemic solutions.

Too often, teachers hear “code red” rhetoric instead of “we trust you to teach.” We must break this pattern. Rather than blaming educators, we should be backing them as professionals, investing in rural and remote schools, supporting teacher retention, and reducing unsustainable workloads that push great teachers out of the profession.

The data tells us what we already know: in reading, only 22.8% of students in very remote schools reached “Strong” or “Exceeding” levels, compared to 71.9% in major cities. That gap cannot be closed by teacher effort alone — it is a symptom of deep, systemic disadvantage.

Education Is More Than a Test Score

We must also ask: what are we measuring, and what are we neglecting?

NAPLAN captures only a slice of student potential. By default, it suppresses the value of most domains in our national curriculum, including the arts, sciences, humanities, technologies, languages, physical education, and social and cultural learning. We are narrowing our vision of education, and in doing so, we’re abandoning creativity and joy in learning. That is not a trade-off we can afford.

Systemic Reform, Not Patchwork Fixes

The results also show that 30.8% of Indigenous students in reading and 32.3% in numeracy require additional support, compared to fewer than 8% of non-Indigenous students.

We cannot continue to place all responsibility for closing these gaps on schools alone. No teacher training program can fully redress the effects of housing insecurity, food stress, or generational poverty. Without multi-agency reform, we are asking schools to solve problems they were never resourced or designed to fix.

We need a comprehensive, wraparound approach — one that ensures every child has access to healthcare, nutrition, stable housing, and the full range of supports necessary to thrive. These are the basic building blocks of learning.

A Call for Real Change

Albert Einstein once said that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” For two decades, we’ve maintained NAPLAN’s narrow metrics as a cornerstone of education policy. The result? A demoralised profession and negligible learning return. Enough already.

We must trust teachers, invest in communities, and redefine what success looks like in Australian education. The stakes are too high for superficial fixes or reactive reforms.

Policy That Reflects Our Values

Addressing structural inequities in early childhood and school education must become a key pillar of Australia’s productivity and equity agenda. This is not just about better outcomes, it’s about doing right by every child in every community.

Let’s move beyond test scores. Let’s build a system that positions our children at the heart of system design, supports the whole learner, and reflects the best of who we are as a nation.