NAPLAN

Every year the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) assesses the literacy and numeracy skills of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. NAPLAN is developed and reported on by Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). In NSW, NAPLAN is implemented and administered by NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) as the Test Administration Authority (TAA).

NAPLAN test window dates are available on the NSW Education Standards Authority website. 

NAPLAN National results can be found on the ACARA website. 

NAPLAN data in Scout

NAPLAN 2024 results are now available in Scout.

Independent school principals manage access for their staff to the NSW Department of Education (DoE) network and related applications such as Scout. Principals and teachers with active DoE accounts, who already have Scout access, can login through the Scout website.

Reports available in Scout

The DoE have updated the layout of Scout and have increased the number of Scout reports available to schools. The reports have been reorganised into the following sections: 

Student and class reports

  • Student reports: Displays individual student NAPLAN scores and proficiency levels across domains.
  • Class reports: Provides a visual representation of the distribution of student proficiencies within a class. 
  • School item analysis reports: Compares a school’s performance against each NAPLAN item.

School performance reports

  • Cohort proficiency report: Displays the percentage of students in each NAPLAN proficiency level for a selected assessment and domain.
  • Cohort score report: Shows average NAPLAN scores over time compared to the State for a selected assessment and domain.

Resources

  • Proficiency descriptions: Describes the proficiency levels for each domain in each NAPLAN assessment.

Scout support for schools

AISNSW has developed two support guides to assist principals and staff to access and navigate Scout. These include:

Note: Access to resources requires a Member school AISNSW login. If you are having difficulties accessing the guides, please email us. 

Principals who have questions about navigating Scout or interpreting their school’s NAPLAN results can contact Ben Arber, Education Consultant: Regulation and Accreditation/NAPLAN.

Proficiency Standards for NAPLAN

Achievement in NAPLAN is reported against 4 proficiency standards, replacing the previous 10-band structure and national minimum standard. As a result of the changes, the NAPLAN measurement scale and time series was reset, which means results from 2023 onwards cannot be directly compared with results from 2008 to 2022.

Proficiency standards describe what students at each year level are expected to know and should be able to do in literacy and numeracy at the time of NAPLAN.

The 4 levels of achievement are:

Exceeding: the student’s result exceeds expectations at the time of testing.

Strong: the student’s result meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing.

Developing: the student’s result indicates that they are working towards expectations at the time of testing.

Needs additional support: the student’s result indicates that they are not achieving the learning outcomes that are expected at the time of testing. They are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily.

Further information about NAPLAN scales and proficiency standards can be found on the ACARA website.