What are the four NAPLAN proficiency levels?
Since 2023, NAPLAN has reported each student’s result as one of four proficiency levels: Exceeding, Strong, Developing and Needs additional support. Each year level tested, Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, has its own standard in each assessment area, writing among them. ACARA sets the standard at a challenging but reasonable expectation of what students know and can do at the time of testing. Panels of expert teachers set and validated the levels, using student responses to NAPLAN tests linked to the Australian Curriculum.
Strong and Exceeding mean the student has shown proficiency; Developing and Needs additional support mean not yet. Because each year level has its own standard, Strong in Year 3 and Strong in Year 9 describe different writing. What they share is that the student met the expectation for their year, on the day. The descriptions below are ACARA’s, shortened; the questions are ours.
| Proficiency level | ACARA’s description | A question for your team |
|---|---|---|
| Exceeding | The result exceeds expectations at the time of testing. | Which writers need extension, and where in the writing program do they get it? |
| Strong | The result meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing. | Is Strong writing found in every class, or clustered in a few? |
| Developing | The student is working towards the expectations at the time of testing. | Which criteria hold these writers back, and what explicit teaching in class would address them? |
| Needs additional support | The student is not achieving the expected learning outcomes and is likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily. | Who are these students, what does their classroom writing show, and what support do they have now? |
Why NAPLAN bands and the national minimum standard were retired
Until 2022, NAPLAN reported results in ten numerical bands on one scale that ran from Year 3 to Year 9, with a national minimum standard set in 2008. Education ministers agreed to replace both from 2023. ACARA’s announcement of 10 February 2023 gave the reasons: the tests had moved online, NAPLAN had moved from May to March, and the minimum standard dated from the years when the tests were on paper. ACARA describes the new standards as more rigorous.
The minimum standard also sent the wrong message. ACARA’s chief executive at the time said parents could take a child at the minimum standard to be doing fine when they were not. The new levels separate students who are working towards the expectation (Developing) from those likely to need extra help (Needs additional support).
The measurement scale was reset too, as the 2020 Independent Review of NAPLAN had recommended, and a new time series began in 2023. Results from 2023 on are not directly compared with results from 2008 to 2022. For a school, that means reading older results beside newer ones with care: a band and a proficiency level sit on different scales, and a writing trend in an older improvement plan starts again from 2023.
What the NAPLAN 2026 writing results show
ACARA released the 2026 national results on 5 August 2026. Taking reading, writing and numeracy together, over Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, around 2 in 3 students were Strong or Exceeding and about 1 in 10 were in Needs additional support. Results overall were broadly stable, with no reportable change in average scores from 2025, or from 2023.
Writing is one of the areas ACARA named for attention. There has been a slight increase since 2023 in students needing additional support in reading and writing, and ACARA’s chief executive, Stephen Gniel, listed that increase among the areas that need collective action. Girls again achieved higher average writing scores than boys in every year group: in Year 7, 69.6% of girls were Strong or Exceeding against 55.6% of boys, and in Year 9, 68.1% against 52.0%.
The longer trend is a concern too. In a 2022 report on a decade of NAPLAN writing, the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) found that average scores for persuasive writing declined from 2011 to 2018, most in Years 7 and 9. Those results sit on the scale used before 2023. In June 2025 AERO released its School Writing Instruction Framework in response: professional learning for leaders and for teachers of every subject, on the view that writing is not only the English teacher’s job.
The national picture tells you where the country is, not where your school is. Your own results, read year level by year level and criterion by criterion, are what set a school priority.
Read 2026 writing for Years 5, 7 and 9 with care
A technical issue with the national NAPLAN platform disrupted the first morning of testing in March 2026. It affected only the writing test and only Years 5, 7 and 9 (Year 3 sits the writing test on paper), and mostly schools on the east coast. Average writing scores nationally were similar to 2025. Because the disruption affected students and schools differently, though, ACARA has put a caveat on the 2026 writing results for Years 5, 7 and 9 in the national reporting, the figures above included.
At school level, find out whether your students’ writing session was disrupted, and note it beside the results when your team reviews them. Where it was, weigh the 2026 writing results for those year levels lightly and lean more on the writing evidence your school already holds. Year 3 writing and the other tests were not affected.
What “Needs additional support” means for a student
Needs additional support is the lowest of the four levels. In ACARA’s description, the student is not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing and is likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily. It is a reason to act, and to act early: since the test moved to March, results reach schools earlier in the year than they used to.
It is not a diagnosis, and it is not a fail. ACARA stresses that NAPLAN is not a pass-or-fail test: it is a point-in-time result and one part of a school’s assessment program. Read the student’s classroom writing beside the result. One piece, written on one day in a text type revealed that morning, may confirm what a teacher already knows or understate what the student can do. Then check what support the student already receives, and whether it reaches their writing.
Developing deserves attention too. Those students are not yet proficient either, and nationally there are more of them than in Needs additional support. Plan for them in class, with explicit whole-class and small-group teaching aimed at the criteria they find hard.
Turn your results into a writing priority
A proficiency level tells you how far a student or cohort is from the expectation. It does not tell you what to teach. For that, read your writing results criterion by criterion for each year level tested, in your school’s NAPLAN reports from your state or sector’s reporting tool. Note the text type that year: NAPLAN writing is narrative or persuasive, and students find out which on the day. The two marking guides share nine criteria; the tenth is character and setting for narrative and persuasive devices for persuasive, and students find different things hard in each.
Look for a criterion, such as paragraphing or cohesion, that is weak in more than one year level and that teachers recognise in the writing in front of them now. Take one or two to your PLCs as a whole-school focus, agree the explicit teaching, and plan moderation so teachers judge that criterion consistently.
Write the priority into your improvement plan as something your team can check: the criterion, the year levels, the teaching and a review point. If the plan also carries a NAPLAN target, pair it with evidence you can gather each term. The same cohort does not sit NAPLAN again until two years later.
Gather writing evidence between NAPLAN years
NAPLAN is a point-in-time check, in March, in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Between tests, a whole-school approach needs its own evidence: a common writing task for a year level, marked on common criteria, with moderated samples so judgements are consistent from class to class, and a review point each term. Keep the conditions comparable (text type, time and support) so that a change reflects the writing, not the task. A school task compares with NAPLAN only as far as its conditions do, and its result is not a predicted proficiency level.
Writing Boost is one way to gather that evidence. A leader sets one task for a year level, and every class’s writing comes back marked on the NAPLAN writing criteria, class beside class, for teachers to check and moderate. Its scores are not official NAPLAN results, and it is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by ACARA.
