Around 10 per cent of students across Australia need additional support in literacy and numeracy to meet higher NAPLAN expectations, according to the data released by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) in the new-look 2023 NAPLAN national results.

This paper is the second in a series of analytical insights papers, which provide accessible, up-to-date analysis of educational datasets. It’s the first in a series that uses the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)’s new Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy in Australia (LLANIA) dataset to explore educational questions.

Australian states and territories independently implemented school closures as part of Australia’s successful COVID-19 elimination strategy. In this paper, the authors estimate the causal effect of pandemic school closures on standardised test scores in Australia, using variation in the length of school closures.

This paper looks at past research and recent data on ATAR with respect to university admissions, completions and attrition, with a particular focus on the growing category of students admitted on a non-ATAR basis.

This report discusses AERO’s 2022 analysis of student writing data. Overall, the research suggests that students’ writing skills have declined over 7 years (2011 to 2018), with many high school students significantly behind the expectations outlined in curriculum documents.