The commentaries highlight Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 NAPLAN results for 2025, nationally and by selected subgroups. Girls continue to outperform boys in literacy and boys continue to outperform girls in numeracy at all year levels. Higher levels of parental education and occupation continue to be associated with higher NAPLAN performance in all domains.

This report is a contribution to the NSW Education Standards Authority’s (NESA) work in assessing options for improving the New South Wales Higher School Certificate (HSC). It notes key strengths of the HSC and provides four options for incremental improvements to the HSC.

An independent review in response to issues arising from the 2024 Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) examinations, including unintentional disclosure of content. This stage one report looked at the production of the exams to determine what happened, why and how. It makes eight recommendations for the Victorian Government.

This paper discusses student participation and engagement with the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests – factors that impact the quality and usefulness of the results. It provides the latest trends and highlights important considerations for the interpretation of students’ results and future implementation of NAPLAN.

Summarising the sharp swings in education policy over the last two decades, the paper highlights the need for a ‘values-based’ vision of Australian schooling that renews and re-articulates the moral purpose of schooling. It calls for transforming NAPLAN into a digital learning tool, in addition to its role in national assessment.