Learning & Teaching News
Understanding Your Child’s NAPLAN Results: A Guide for Parents and Carers
The individual student reports for NAPLAN have arrived at school and we will be posting them home starting next week. As the only nationwide literacy and numeracy assessment in Australia, NAPLAN gives us a helpful snapshot of how our students are progressing in key foundational skills like reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and mathematics.
When you open your child’s report, it is easy to feel a bit overwhelmed by the scales and charts. Here is a quick guide on how to read the results and what to do next.
How to Read the Report
Each assessment area features a scale. Your child's performance is marked as a black dot. To give you context, the report also shows:
A black triangle: The national average for that year level.
A light shaded rectangle: The range achieved by the middle 60% of students across Australia.
Your child's dot will sit within one of four proficiency levels:
Exceeding: The result exceeds expectations at the time of testing.
Strong: The result meets challenging but reasonable expectations (this means your child is right where they need to be).
Developing: Your child is working towards expectations.
Needs additional support: The result indicates your child isn't quite hitting the expected learning outcomes yet and will likely need extra help to progress.
Note on tracking progress: If your child is in Year 7, or 9, you can compare their 2026 proficiency levels to their 2024 results. Keep in mind that as students grow, the difficulty of the levels increases. If your child achieved a "Strong" in Year 7 and a "Strong" again in Year 9, they have made great progress!
The Bigger Picture (Keep this in mind!)
While NAPLAN is a highly valuable tool, it is important to remember that it is a snapshot of one day. It reflects how your child performed during the test window, not their entire learning journey.
In fact, this year many schools across the country including St Peter’s College experienced online connectivity disruptions during the writing test this year, which is a great reminder that one test score never defines a student's complete ability. NAPLAN doesn't replace the continuous, deep assessments our classroom teachers do every single day.
What Actions Should You Take?
1.Review the report together: At home.
Look over the results with your child. Focus heavily on celebrating their strengths and framing the "Developing" or "Needs additional support" areas simply as goals we can work on next.
2.Check the detailed summary: Page 4 of the report.
Turn to the fourth page of your report. It provides a helpful, practical breakdown of exactly what skills and knowledge students typically demonstrate at each proficiency level.
3.Connect with the classroom teacher: Book a chat.
Your child’s teacher always has the best, most comprehensive insight into their daily educational progress and our Student Learning Conferences running later this term are a great opportunity to get more information. Use the NAPLAN report as a conversation starter. You can ask: "How do these results align with what you see in class, and what can we do at home to support their growth?"
Our teaching team is already reviewing the school-wide data to see where we can further challenge our students and where we need to adjust our learning programs. If you have any immediate concerns or questions about your child's report, please reach out to their classroom teacher. Together, we can ensure they have the exact support they need to thrive!
Bradley Scammell
Middle Years Curriculum Leader – Clyde North Campus