Category: Gender

Analysing the 2023 NAPLAN Test Results: A Whole New World of Testing

The release of NAPLAN test results always sparks conversations and debates about the state of education and student performance. The 2023 results are no exception, but this year’s results come with a twist that makes comparisons even more intriguing. With NAPLAN testing shifting to two months earlier in the school year (from May to March), it was expected that student results would be lower than in previous years (when students had two months of additional learning to influence test preparation). Of course, it doesn’t make much sense to compare the test results in 2023 with any of the previous tests (which began in 2008), since we would be comparing ripe apples with slightly less ripe apples. But I decided to go ahead and compare the 2023 results with the 2022 results anyway, just for fun, split up by gender. Some of the findings were definitely unexpected!

Reading and Writing: A Mixed Bag

The 2023 reading results for male and female students in every tested year level (i.e., Years 3, 5, 7, and 9) all showed a downward trend compared to the 2022 results. This can likely be attributed to the earlier testing date, with 2023 students having less time to develop reading skills before the test.

There was a dip in writing results among primary school males and females that mirrored this trend, as was expected. However, in a fascinating twist, writing scores actually improved for male and female students in Year 7 and Year 9. In fact, compared to all NAPLAN writing tests since it was modified in 2011, the 2023 scores were the highest ever for Year 7 males and females and Year 9 males, while for Year 9 females it was their second highest. How is this possible? Could something have changed in the marking process? This is unlikely since nothing like this has been discussed by ACARA. Did secondary school students find the 2023 writing prompt easier to address in the limited test time? This is somewhat plausible. Could secondary school students be feeling more positive about NAPLAN testing in March than in May? Without more information, it’s not possible to know what has driven this marked increase in secondary writing test scores. But it’s certainly odd that students with two fewer months of preparation would perform higher on a test that, for all intents and purposes, seems equivalent to all recent writing tests.

Despite the positive news for secondary students, it should be pointed out that Year 9 males are still performing at a level equivalent to Year 7 females, demonstrating a persistent gender gap that merits further investigation. Year 9 males performed more than two years of equivalent learning behind Year 9 females (i.e., 24.12 months – yikes!).

Spelling and Grammar: Heading Down

Like reading, spelling scores were down for males and females in all tested year levels. Again, this was expected given the shift to earlier testing.

Grammar and punctuation results mostly followed the same downward pattern, with Year 3, Year 5, and Year 9 males and females all achieving lower scores than the 2022 students. Strangely, grammar and punctuation scores for Year 7 students from each gender were higher than Year 7 students who sat the test in 2022.

As a noteworthy point from the data, Year 7 females outperformed Year 9 males for the first time in any NAPLAN grammar and punctuation test (or any NAPLAN literacy test). This can be explained by the considerable (but expected) decline in Year 9 male scores, while Year 7 female performance was somehow largely consistent with recent years, even with the earlier testing.

Numeracy: A Glint of Improvement

In terms of numeracy, all primary school males and females somehow scored higher than their 2022 counterparts (except for Year 5 females whose scores in 2023 were slightly down). Surely the numeracy test and its marking procedures haven’t changed, so it’s unclear why there would be clear improvements. Year 3 males managed to achieve their highest mean score of any previous NAPLAN numeracy test. With two fewer months of class time 🤷‍♂️

On the other hand, secondary school students, regardless of gender, scored lower than the 2022 students. But again, this was expected, so no alarm bells yet.

Final Thoughts: Beyond the Numbers

While the 2023 NAPLAN results might not be directly comparable to previous years due to the changed testing timeline, they offer valuable insights into the dynamics of education and student performance. The interplay of gender, year levels, and subject areas provides a rich tapestry of information that policymakers, educators, and researchers can draw from to tailor interventions and strategies.

It was kind of shocking to see that in specific areas, the earlier 2023 testing procedure resulted in higher scores (i.e., secondary writing and primary numeracy). That said, all students would clearly benefit from the additional two months of learning about reading, spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

The 2023 results highlight the importance of considering the broader context surrounding NAPLAN test scores. As we move forward with this whole new world of NAPLAN testing, complete with four shiny new proficiency standards that replace the previous bands, it will be as intriguing as ever to see the rise and fall of student results across the country. These broad pictures of student achievement would not be possible without NAPLAN testing.

Gender gaps in literacy and numeracy

This post provides the key points of a journal article I recently had published in The Australian Educational Researcher, co-written with Belinda Hopwood (UTAS), Vesife Hatisaru (ECU), and David Hicks (UTAS). You can read the whole article here

boy and girl reading
Girls better at literacy, boys better at numeracy?

In recent years, there has been increased attention on gender gaps in literacy and numeracy achievement. This is due in part to international assessments of students’ reading achievement such as PIRLS and PISA (Lynn & Mikk, 2009) that have found gender differences in reading are universal, with girls from all participating countries significantly and meaningfully outperforming boys. Previous research has shown that girls score higher on reading tests and are more likely to be in advanced reading groups at school (Hek et al., 2019), while those who fall below the minimum standards for reading are more likely to be boys (Reilly et al., 2019). Large-scale assessments of numeracy have seen similarly consistent results, though with boys outperforming girls. So, what’s the situation in Australia?

Recently, three colleagues and I found out what 13 years of NAPLAN reading and numeracy testing might show about boys’ and girls’ performance in the Australian context. Something that has been lacking from international research has been a clear picture of how reading and numeracy gender gaps become wider or more narrow across the primary and secondary school years. To provide this picture, we drew on publicly available NAPLAN results from the NAPLAN website (ACARA, 2021) and The Grattan Institute’s (Goss & Sonnemann, 2018) equivalent year level technique.

Findings: Gender gap in reading

We looked at the average reading performance of boys and girls across the four tested year levels of NAPLAN (i.e., Years 3, 5, 7, and 9) between 2008 and 2021. Girls improved consistently from Year 3 to Year 9, with approximately two years of progress made between each test. Boys progressed to a similar extent between Years 3 and 5, yet they fell behind the girls at a faster rate between Year 5 and Year 7. Specifically, boys made 1.95 years of progress between Year 3 and Year 5 and 1.92 years between Year 7 and Year 9, but only managed 1.73 years of progress between Year 5 and Year 7 (i.e., in the transition between primary and secondary school).

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The average gap between boys and girls was wider for each increase in year level, with Year 3 males around 4 months of equivalent learning behind Year 3 females, Year 5 males 5 months behind, Year 7 males 7 months behind, and Year 9 males around 10 months of learning behind Year 9 females. While boys made more progress between Year 7 and Year 9, this was also when girls made most progress. While boys seem to keep up with girls reasonably well in the primary school years, more boys struggle with reading as they transition into secondary school.

Findings: Gender gap in numeracy

The overall picture for numeracy is similar to reading, though with boys outperforming girls and the gender gap increasing across each tested year level. Boys made approximately two years of progress between each numeracy test, while girls consistently made just over 1.8 years of progress between each test, leading to a gender gap that grew wider at a consistent rate over time. Put differently, boys and girls made consistent progress between each numeracy test, though the rate of progress was higher for males, leading to a neatly widening gender gap over time.

What about the writing gender gap?

In 2020, I conducted a similar study that looked into the NAPLAN writing results, finding that on average, boys performed around 8 months of equivalent learning behind girls in Year 3, a full year of learning behind in Year 5, 20 months behind in Year 7, and a little over two years of learning behind in Year 9. Boys fell further behind girls with writing at every tested year level, yet the rate at which girls outperformed boys was greatest between Years 5 and 7. Our study into reading and numeracy has found that similar gaps exist in these domains too, though not to the same extent as writing. For ease of comparison, the following graph shows the extent and development of the gender gaps in numeracy, reading, and writing.

gender gaps
Gender gaps in numeracy, reading, and writing (2008-2021)

Why do more boys struggle with literacy as they transition into secondary school? For most Australian students, Year 7 is when many (most?) will move physically from their primary school campus to a secondary school campus. This physical transition has been shown to impact student reading achievement, particularly for boys (Hopwood et al., 2017). For some students, their reading achievement stalls in this transition, or in serious cases, declines to levels below that of their primary school years (Hanewald, 2013). Some students entering secondary school have failed to acquire the necessary and basic reading skills in primary school required for secondary school learning (Lonsdale & McCurry, 2004) stifling their future reading development (Culican, 2005). The secondary school curriculum is more demanding and students are expected to be independent readers, able to decode and comprehend a range of complex texts (Duke et al., 2011; Hay, 2014). As argued by Heller and Greenleaf (2007), schools cannot settle for a modest level of reading instruction, given the importance of reading for education, work, and civic engagement. We need to know more about why this stage of schooling is difficult for many boys and how they can be better supported.

The analysis of the numeracy gender gap was quite different from both the reading and writing results. While previous international studies have suggested that the gender gap in numeracy only becomes apparent in secondary school (Heyman & Legare, 2004), this study showed that average scores for boys were higher than those of girls on every NAPLAN numeracy test, though to a lesser extent than the other domains. The widest numeracy gender gap of a little over 6 months of learning in Year 9 was smaller than the smallest writing gender gap of 8 months in Year 3.

Implications of gender gaps in literacy and numeracy

The findings suggest links between reading and writing development, in that more boys struggle with both aspects of literacy in the transition from primary to secondary school. While other researchers have looked at the numeracy gap over time using NAPLAN scale scores (e.g., Leder & Forgasz, 2018), by using the equivalent year level values, we’ve been able to show how the gender gap widens gradually from roughly 2 months of learning in Year 3 to 6 months of learning in Year 9. While this supports the general argument that, on average, boys outperform girls in numeracy and girls outperform boys in literacy tests, it also shows how the gaps are not equal.

References

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2021). NAPLAN national report for 2021. https://bit.ly/3q6NaC4

Culican, S. J. (2005). Learning to read: Reading to learn – A middle years literacy intervention research project. Final Report 2003–4. Catholic Education Office.

Goss, P., & Sonnemann, J. (2018). Measuring student progress: A state-by-state report card. https://bit.ly/2UVNxy5

Hanewald, R. (2013). Transition between primary and secondary school: Why it is important and how it can be supported. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 62–74.

Hek, M., Buchman, C., & Kraaykamp, G. (2019). Educational systems and gender differences in reading: A comparative multilevel analysis. European Sociological Review, 35(2), 169-186.

Heller, R. & Greenleaf, C. (2007). Literacy instruction in the content areas: Getting to the core of middle and high school improvement. Alliance for Excellent Education.

Heyman, G. D., & Legare, C. H. (2004). Children’s beliefs about gender differences in the academic and social domains. Sex Roles, 50(3/4), 227-236. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SERS.0000015554.12336.30

Hopwood, B., Hay, I., & Dyment, J. (2017). Students’ reading achievement during the transition from primary to secondary school. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 40(1), 46-58.

Leder, G. C., & Forgasz, H. (2018). Measuring who counts: Gender and mathematics assessment. ZDM, 50, 687–697. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-018-0939-z

Lonsdale, M. & McCurry, D. (2004). Literacy in the new millennium. Australian Government, Department of Education, Science and Training.

Lynn, R., & Mikk, J. (2009). Sex differences in reading achievement. Trames, 13, 3-13.

Reilly, D., Neuman, D., & Andrews, G. (2019). Gender differences in reading and writing achievement: Evidence from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). American Psychologist, 74(4), 445-458.