How to read your child's NAPLAN results

Every year, thousands of parents open an envelope or log into a portal and stare at a NAPLAN report full of unfamiliar terms: scaled scores, proficiency levels, national averages. Here’s what it all actually means, and what it doesn’t.

What changed in 2023

Since 2023, NAPLAN results have been reported against four proficiency levels instead of the old numbered bands and “national minimum standard”: Exceeding, Strong, Developing, and Needs additional support, as set out on the official NAP proficiency level descriptions page. Because the scale and the cut-points changed, results from 2023 onwards cannot be compared with anything from 2022 or earlier — the NAP reporting information explains that the whole time series was reset.

The four levels mean roughly this:

Exceeding — well above the level expected at the time of testing.
Strong — at the challenging but reasonable level expected for that year group.
Developing — working towards the expected level, with some gaps.
Needs additional support — not yet meeting the expected level, and likely to benefit from targeted help.

Both Exceeding and Strong are considered solid results. A “Developing” result isn’t a crisis on its own, but it’s worth raising with your child’s teacher if it appears alongside other signs of difficulty.

What a scaled score actually is

Underneath the four levels sits a scaled score — a number on a continuous scale that lets the same skill be measured across year levels and over time. The proficiency level is just a band that a student’s scaled score falls into for their year and domain (reading, writing, numeracy, and so on). Two students can both be “Strong” but sit at quite different points within that band, so if your child’s report shows a scaled score, it’s worth looking at where it sits within the band, not just which band it’s in.

Why a school’s cohort can swing a lot year to year

If you’re reading a school’s aggregated NAPLAN results — on a school newsletter, or on the My School website — treat small changes with caution. A single class of 20 to 60 students is a small sample. One or two students having an off day, joining or leaving the cohort, or a different mix of backgrounds from one year’s Year 3 group to the next, can shift a school’s average noticeably even though nothing about the teaching has changed. This is exactly why ACARA suppresses results for any group of fewer than five matched students — the numbers simply aren’t reliable at that size, as noted in the My School FAQs.

The practical takeaway: don’t read too much into a single year’s dip or spike at a school, especially a small primary school. Look at a few years of results together if you can, rather than one snapshot.

Why you should compare with similar schools, not just the state average

The most useful comparison on My School isn’t a school’s raw NAPLAN average against the national or state figure — it’s the “similar schools” comparison, which lines a school up against others with a comparable ICSEA value (a measure of the socio-educational advantage of the school’s student community, explained in our ICSEA guide). Two schools can have very different raw results simply because they serve different communities, without one school necessarily doing a better job of teaching.

When you’re using NAPLAN data to help choose a school, or to understand how your child’s school is tracking, ask:

How does this school compare with schools of a similar ICSEA, not just the state average?
Has the school’s result relative to similar schools been consistent over several years?
Is the cohort size large enough for the result to mean much?

Using your child’s individual report

Your child’s own Individual Student Report is more useful day to day than any school-level comparison. It shows:

Their proficiency level in each domain.
Where their scaled score sits, usually with a marker showing the range for their year level.
Brief descriptions of what students at each level can typically do, drawn from the NAPLAN proficiency level descriptions.

If anything looks unexpected — a result well below what you’d expect from schoolwork, or a sudden change from a previous test — the first step is a conversation with the classroom teacher, not a panic. NAPLAN is one test, on one day, measuring a narrow set of literacy and numeracy skills. It’s a useful data point alongside report cards and teacher feedback, not a verdict on your child.

A quick summary

Four levels since 2023: Exceeding, Strong, Developing, Needs additional support.
Scaled scores sit underneath the levels and let you see where within a band a result falls.
Small schools and small cohorts can show big swings year to year — look at trends, not single years.
Always compare a school’s results against similar-ICSEA schools, not just the state average.
Use NAPLAN alongside other information about your child, not instead of it.