Queensland students outshine the nation in NAPLAN

Queensland students have achieved a top ranking in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) for the first time ever.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Education Minister Kate Jones today visited Virginia State School to congratulate students and teachers on the outstanding results.

The Premier said the improvement of Queensland students had continued to outpace the nation.

“NAPLAN is a point in time test that is just one tool that teachers and parents can use to get an idea about student learning,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“However, Queensland students deserve to be congratulated for their efforts.

“Compared with last year, we have improved in 15 out of 20 test areas in our students’ performance in meeting the National Minimum Standard.

“Our schools have every right to be proud of Queensland’s results.

“Our Year 3 students continue to perform strongly with their 2016 results improving across all test areas, ranking first in the country for Grammar and Punctuation, against National Minimum Standards.

“We also ranked second in the country for students meeting the National Minimum Standard in the areas of Year 3 Reading and Numeracy, Year 5 Grammar and Punctuation and Year 7 Spelling.”

Ms Jones said more than 200,000 Queensland school students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 completed the test in May.

“Since the beginning of NAPLAN testing in 2008, Queensland schools have demonstrated one of the greatest improvements of any jurisdiction,” she said.

“The strong improvement we are seeing – particularly in the early years – shows our education reforms and investment in extra teachers are delivering results.

“Implementing the Australian Curriculum, universal access to kindy, the introduction of the prep year and moving Year 7 to high school have helped lift education outcomes for all students.

“We are determined to raise the average writing results for students in Years 7 and 9 are working to develop a consistent school-wide approach to improve writing across all learning areas and year levels.”

Ms Jones said parents would begin to receive their children’s results from this week.

NAPLAN testing provides students, parents, teachers, schools and school systems with important information about the literacy and numeracy achievements of students at that point in time.

Ms Jones said NAPLAN would begin to move online from 2017, with significant development, planning and trialling to take place before full implementation in 2019.

“This will help transform the way results can be used by schools, reduce the time between testing and reporting and broaden the curriculum range of assessments,” she said.

The National Report containing final results for 2016 will be released in December and will also appear online in MySchool in 2017.

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