Qld students lag behind national average on NAPLAN literacy and numeracy testing

Qld lags behind nation on NAPLAN testing with reading results dropping across all year cohorts Wed 5 Aug 2026 at 5:36am In short: Results from the 2026 iteration of NAPLAN testing has revealed Queensland consistently ranks second last among the states and territories. Reading proficiency was of particular concern, with students across all year groups achieving worse average scores than last year. What's next? The Department of Education says the government is focused on "getting back to basics". Queensland students have continued to lag behind the national average in literacy and numeracy, according to the latest round of NAPLAN results. About 1.2 million students sat for NAPLAN testing in March, which assesses Australian year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students' proficiencies across numeracy, reading, writing, spelling, and grammar and punctuation. A spokesperson for the Department of Education said the government was focused on "getting back to basics". "On the back of implementing a mandatory year 1 Phonics Check in 2025, Queensland state and non-state schools have been piloting a numeracy check which is helping the department assess the best approach for a future statewide universal screener," the spokesperson said. "In this year's NAPLAN assessments, more than 60 per cent of Queensland students achieved a proficiency level of strong or exceeding in Reading and Numeracy which is statistically similar to previous years." Consistently second-last Queensland consistently rated comparably or below the other states and territories, other than the Northern Territory, in terms of average score and students scoring at a strong proficiency level or higher. Levels of achievement across all year levels and subjects broadly followed geographic location of students. Students in major cities achieved higher average scores than those in regional Queensland, with scores decreasing further into remote areas. Compared with last year's results, Queensland year 5 students have seen improvement in writing, spelling, and numeracy, and year 7 students have improved on numeracy. Year 3 and 9 students have achieved average results worse than last year's on every subject. The proportion of year 3 students scoring at a strong proficiency level or better has dropped since last year in writing, spelling, numeracy, and grammar and punctuation, with the cohort only achieving comparable scores in reading. In comparison with last year's results, Queensland year 9 students achieved similar scores in spelling and numeracy, and scored worse in writing, reading, and grammar and punctuation. Nationally, year 3 students scored within the margin of error of last year's results in reading, spelling, and grammar and punctuation, with drops of about 3 per cent in students achieving a strong or above results in writing and a 2 per cent drop in the same metric for numeracy. Reading results below par Reading scores were of particular concern for Queensland, with each year group achieving average scores below the standard set last year. Across years 3, 7 and 9, only the Northern Territory had a larger proportion of students in the "needs additional support" category, with Western Australia also coming behind Queensland in the year 5 cohort. In terms of numeracy, Queensland's average NAPLAN score for year 9 students was 555.8, above 2023's score of 554 but slightly below last year's score of 556.3 — within the margin of error. The same metric for year 3 students shows a more precipitous drop, with an average numeracy score of 387.6, down from last year's score of 393.1. Numeracy scores for year 5 and 7 students fell within the margin of error of last year's results. The department spokesperson also noted the state's participation rate of 92.2 per cent. "Years 5, 7 and 9 showed an overall increase in participation in comparison to 2025," they said. "Queensland state schools achieved their highest year 7 participation rate since 2014 (92.4 per cent) and their highest year 9 rate since 2017 (85.7 per cent)."