Proficiency standards show a student’s NAPLAN achievement based on a more realistic guide for where students should be at the time of testing. The standards set a challenging but reasonable level expected for the student at the time of testing, based mainly on skills learned from previous years of schooling. The NAPLAN proficiency standards in each test area and year level have four proficiency levels.

There are four proficiency levels for the NAPLAN tests: Exceeding, Strong, Developing, and Needs additional support.

The highest proficiency level of ‘Exceeding’ indicates that a student’s result exceeded expectations at the time of testing. A student with a result at the ‘Strong’ level has demonstrated that they have met the challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing.

Students who achieve a result of ‘Developing’ for one or more NAPLAN test areas have demonstrated that they were working towards expectations at the time of testing.

Students who receive a result of ‘Needs additional support’ have demonstrated that they were not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing. These students are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily.

Proficiency standards are common in other national and international assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the NAP sample assessments in science literacy, civics and citizenship, and ICT literacy.

In 2019, Ministers agreed through the National School Reform Agreement to introduce proficiency standards for NAPLAN. With the transition to online testing complete in February 2023, Ministers endorsed the decision to proceed with implementing these reporting changes. A copy of the communiqué from the Education Ministers Meeting can be found at https://www.education.gov.au/education-ministers-meeting/resources/education-ministers-meeting-communique-10-february-2023.

The proficiency standards were developed with input from all education authorities, and the design of the student reports involved input from both parent focus groups and national parent organisations.

Reporting against proficiency standards aims to provide a range of benefits, including simple, clearer, and more helpful information at a glance. Teachers and parents will be able to determine if a student is meeting expectations for their current stage of schooling. The proficiency level descriptors provide information on what students at each level can typically demonstrate in each NAPLAN test domain, using the Australian Curriculum as a reference.

Teachers can use this information to identify individual students' strengths and weaknesses and to determine the proportion of students who are meeting the expected levels of achievement.

NAPLAN results and the proficiency level descriptors can be used to determine areas where further support may be required, in conjunction with ongoing assessment and professional judgement about student progress in literacy and numeracy. This information can inform student feedback and discussions with parents, which, together with other school assessments, can be used to assist children in reaching their full potential.

Teachers can view the full proficiency level descriptions for each NAPLAN assessment area on the ACARA NAPLAN website reporting page.

Expert panels of subject-area specialists set proficiency standards.

The teacher panels classified NAPLAN questions into proficiency levels based on their judgement of what students in each level could achieve and the knowledge and skills that students would have been expected to have been taught in previous years. These judgements were mapped onto the NAPLAN measurement scales to set numerical cut-points between the levels.

The cut-points for each proficiency level were established on the new scale in 2023 and will not change in future years. This allows the monitoring of school-level performance over time.

Due to the earlier administration of NAPLAN in March and the reporting reforms in 2023, including the introduction of the new NAPLAN measurement scale and time series that are more suited to the online tests, results from 2023 onward cannot be directly compared with results from 2008 to 2022.

As proficiency standards and levels have replaced the previous numerical (NAPLAN) bands, information on student achievement with reference to these bands is no longer available.

Schools can track a student's performance relative to that of other students by using the information on the individual student report and comparing it against the national average, as well as the student’s result relative to the range of achievement for the middle 60% of students.

Schools can track individual student results over time by comparing the numerical scores provided in school-level results in the VCAA Data Service.

Class or school results can be tracked over time by measuring the proportion of students who sit within each proficiency level over different years – as the cohort moves from Year 7 to Year 9, for example, or for successive cohorts at the same year level.

Improvement will generally be visible when an increased proportion of students achieve results at higher levels. However, it must be kept in mind that an increase in the proportion of students in the ‘Strong’ and ‘Developing’ categories could be partially the result of students moving into the lower level from the levels above (Exceeding and Strong respectively). Therefore, changes in the proportions across all levels need to be considered before an overall assessment of improvement can be made.

NAPLAN tests are one aspect of a school's assessment and reporting process. The tests are not intended to replace the ongoing assessments made by teachers about each student’s performance or progress.

A lower-than-expected performance may indicate the student requires more targeted support. Results can also reflect poor performance on that particular day and should not be viewed in isolation.

For this reason, parents have always been advised to discuss any concerns they have about their child’s NAPLAN results with their teacher to get a more complete picture of their child's literacy and numeracy attainment and any areas in which they might need further support.

The previous National Minimum Standard provided an approximate measure of which students needed additional support but identified too few of these students. It could also give the impression that a student had met learning expectations if they were above the National Minimum Standard.

The ‘Needs additional support’ proficiency level is a better representation of students who need additional support and is intended to identify students who are most at risk of not progressing satisfactorily at school. This does not mean that students whose results are at other levels will not require support in particular areas. For example, those in the ‘Developing’ category are likely to need relatively more support than those in the ‘Exceeding’ and ‘Strong’ categories.

Schools and teachers are encouraged to review student NAPLAN results together with their own knowledge of a student to identify if support is required for students at levels other than ‘Needs additional support’. Regardless of how a student performs, improvement is always possible.

Teachers can review student NAPLAN results together with their own knowledge of a student and the exemplar items provided in the student-level reporting on the VCAA Data Service to consider what needs to be done to support a student’s progress.

Information on all NAPLAN reporting changes, including more detailed proficiency level descriptions (online and printable versions), is available on the ACARA NAPLAN website reporting page.

To assist parents and carers in understanding the NAPLAN reporting, an information brochure for parents and carers can be downloaded from the VCAA NAPLAN website. The information brochure for parents and carers are also available in other languages on the VCAA website.
 

Parents may find the following video on reading the Individual Student Report

useful to understand student-level reporting and the proficiency standards for NAPLAN.

Schools access the VCAA Data Service using the same login details as those distributed for the VCAA NAPLAN Test Administration website. Schools needing login support should contact the VCAA NAPLAN Helpdesk.

The VCAA Data Service is accessible using:

• IE (V11) on Windows 7
• Edge on Windows 10
• Safari on MacBook
• Safari on iPad (landscape only)
• Chrome on an Android Tablet (landscape only)
• IE (Windows 7) or Edge (Windows 10) on a Surface Tablet (landscape only)

A VCAA NAPLAN Reporting Guide is available to assist with accessing and interpreting the reports.

In addition, the VCAA will be offering professional learning sessions for school staff on using the VCAA Data Service reports later this year.