CANBERRA, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Almost 10 percent of Australian school students need additional support to achieve basic literacy and numeracy standards, annual nationwide testing has found.
The 2025 National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests, the results of which were published on Wednesday, found that about one-third of Australian school students are not meeting expectations for their age group.
Administered every year since 2008 to almost all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 of their school-based education, the standardized NAPLAN tests assess reading, writing and numeracy skills.
Students are graded against national standards in each skill as either exceeding, strong, developing or in need of additional support.
Wednesday's results revealed that 9.4 percent of students on average across all age groups were in need of additional support to reach writing standards.
In reading, 9.3 percent of students were in need of additional support, and in numeracy, it was 9.2 percent.
Between 22.5 and 24 percent of students were found to be developing towards the national standard in each skill.
Reading had the highest proportion of students achieve either a strong or exceeding grade at 68.2 percent, up from 67 percent in 2024, and writing had the lowest at 66.6 percent.
In very remote areas, less than 23 percent of students rated either strong or exceeding across all three skills compared to over 70 percent of students in major cities. ■
