STEM Equity Monitor

Australian assessment scores

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a literacy and numeracy assessment for Australian students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

The assessment shows how every child is progressing against national standards in literacy and numeracy over time. This progress is important to follow as numeracy is an essential basis for STEM skills.

Note: The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) reported student achievement in NAPLAN against 4 levels of proficiency in 2023. This replaced the previous numerical NAPLAN bands and national minimum standards. Because of this, the time series was reset and NAPLAN achievement from 2022 and earlier can’t be compared with 2023 onwards.

 

NAPLAN assessment scores

Explore the interactive dashboard

You can use this interactive data to compare NAPLAN numeracy scores across Australia for girls and boys in different schooling year levels from 2023 onwards. For previous years, see the other visualisation on this page.

Source: Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) 2025

Learn more about the data

The Power BI dashboards in the monitor present data in different formats, including charts, graphs and tables. You can customise these dashboards based on what you're interested in.

  • Filter the data: Click the options on the left side of each dashboard and make your selections.
  • Find more information about a specific data point: Hover your cursor over the dashboard to reveal more information, such as counts or percentages, if available.
  • Reset the page to its original selections: Click the button labelled ‘Refresh to default view’ in the bottom left corner of the page.
  • Move between different pages in a dashboard: Click the buttons along the top of the dashboard, if available.

As noted above, the time series was reset in 2023. While 2024 and future results can be compared to 2023 to form a new time series, NAPLAN achievement from 2022 and previous years can’t be compared with 2023.

From 2023 onwards, student achievement in NAPLAN is reported against 4 levels of proficiency. The standards are set at a challenging but reasonable expectation of what students know and can do at the time of testing. There are 4 proficiency levels:

  • exceeding
  • strong
  • developing
  • needs additional support.

Before 2023, reporting was against numerical NAPLAN bands and national minimum standards. Each of the NAPLAN assessment scales described student achievement from year 3 to year 9 on a 10-band scale.

The common scale through years 3, 5, 7 and 9 allowed us to monitor the results of all students. The scale was divided into 10 bands to cover the full range of student achievement in the tests. These bands mapped the increasing complexity of the skills NAPLAN assesses.

NAPLAN reporting used 6 bands at each year level. Student achievement usually fell between these ranges:

  • year 3: bands 1 to 6
  • year 5: bands 3 to 8
  • year 7: bands 4 to 9
  • year 9: bands 5 to 10.

Read about our methodology.

Data insights

Numeracy

In 2025, girls’ and boys’ average numeracy scores increased for students across all year levels. Average numeracy scores were higher for boys than girls across all year levels. This was also the case in 2024.

Average numeracy scores by year level and gender, Australia, 2024 to 2025
  2024 2025 Change in average score from 2024 to 2025
Year 3      
     Girls 396 398 2
     Boys 412 413 1
Year 5      
     Girls 480 481 1
     Boys 498 502 4
Year 7      
     Girls 533 536 3
     Boys 547 553 6
Year 9      
     Girls 560 565 5
     Boys 570 580 10

Between 14% and 19% of boys at each year level were in the ‘exceeding’ proficiency level for numeracy in 2025. This range is an improvement from 2024, where 11% to 16% of boys achieved ‘exceeding’ proficiency.

Between 8% and 12% of girls at each year level were in the ‘exceeding’ proficiency level for numeracy in 2025. This range is similar to 2024 results, where 7% to 11% of girls achieved the ‘exceeding’ proficiency level. The proportion of girls in the ‘exceeding’ proficiency level was consistently lower than boys across all year levels.

Children in regional and remote locations have consistently lower average numeracy scores compared to children in major cities. The difference in average scores between children in very remote locations and children in major cities ranged between 110 points (for year 3) and 140points (for year 7).

Nationally, there was no difference in the proportion of First Nations students in years 3 and 7 in the ‘needs additional support’ proficiency level between 2024 and 2025. There were decreases in the proportions of First Nations students in years 5 and 9 in this category during this period.

  • For First Nations children in Year 5, there were decreases from 32% in 2024 to 30% in 2025.
  • For First Nations children in Year 9, this was a decrease from 35% in 2024 to 34% in 2025.

Children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds had higher average numeracy scores than non-CALD children. At the national level in 2025, average numeracy scores were:

  • 412 for year 3 CALD students compared to 403 for year 3 non-CALD students
  • 507 for year 5 CALD students compared to 486 for year 5 non-CALD students
  • 566 for year 7 CALD students compared to 538 for year 7 non-CALD students
  • 592 for year 9 CALD students compared to 566 for year 9 non-CALD students.

Literacy

In 2025, girls’ literacy scores were an average of 17 points higher than boys’ scores. This was similar to 2024, where girls’ literacy scores were an average of 18 points higher than boys’ scores.

Across all year levels, girls outperformed boys in every literacy assessment area. These areas are:

  • grammar and punctuation
  • reading
  • writing
  • spelling.

In each of the literacy assessment areas, a larger percentage of girls than boys were in the 'exceeding’ proficiency level. The only exception was for spelling at year 3 level. In this case, 17% of both boys and girls were in the ‘exceeding’ proficiency level.

See full NAPLAN literacy results on the National Assessment Program website.

 

NAPLAN assessment scores over previous years

Explore the interactive dashboard

You can use this data to compare NAPLAN numeracy scores across Australia for girls and boys in different schooling year levels, and see trends in average scores over time, up to 2022.

Source: Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) 2023

Note: NAPLAN testing did not take place in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learn more about the data

The Power BI dashboards in the monitor present data in different formats, including charts, graphs and tables. You can customise these dashboards based on what you're interested in.

  • Filter the data: Click the options on the left side of each dashboard and make your selections.
  • Find more information about a specific data point: Hover your cursor over the dashboard to reveal more information, such as counts or percentages, if available.
  • Reset the page to its original selections: Click the button labelled ‘Refresh to default view’ in the bottom left corner of the page.
  • Move between different pages in a dashboard: Click the buttons along the top of the dashboard, if available.

As noted above, the time series was reset in 2023. While 2024 and future results will be able to be compared to 2023 to form a new time series, NAPLAN achievement from 2022 and previous years can’t be compared with 2023.

From 2023 onwards, student achievement in NAPLAN is reported against 4 levels of proficiency. The standards are set at a challenging but reasonable expectation of what students know and can do at the time of testing. There are 4 proficiency levels: 

  • exceeding 
  • strong 
  • developing
  • needs additional support.

Before 2023, reporting was against numerical NAPLAN bands and national minimum standards. Each of the NAPLAN assessment scales described student achievement from year 3 to year 9 on a 10-band scale.

The common scale through years 3, 5, 7 and 9 allowed us to monitor the results of all students. The scale was divided into 10 bands to cover the full range of student achievement in the tests. These bands mapped the increasing complexity of the skills NAPLAN assesses.

NAPLAN reporting used 6 bands at each year level. Student achievement usually fell between these ranges:

  • year 3: bands 1 to 6
  • year 5: bands 3 to 8 
  • year 7: bands 4 to 9 
  • year 9: bands 5 to 10.

Read about our methodology.

Data insights

Numeracy over previous years

In 2022, girls’ and boys’ average numeracy scores decreased for all year levels compared to 2018. The decreases were similar between girls and boys in years 7 and 9. Average scores decreased slightly more for girls in years 3 and 5.

Across all year levels in 2022, a smaller percentage of girls than boys achieved at or above the highest band usually achieved in their year group. This is consistent with NAPLAN numeracy results in each year from 2018 to 2021.

The differences between diversity groups are similar over time:

  • Average numeracy scores were consistently lower for First Nations children compared to non-Indigenous children, across all year levels.
  • Children in regional and remote locations have consistently lower average numeracy scores, compared to children in major cities.

Children with a CALD background were an exception, as they tended to have higher average numeracy scores than non-CALD children over the entire time series.