The Phonics Screening Check is taken by Year 1 students in all SA government schools. The check is a short, simple assessment that helps teachers to measure how well students are learning to decode and blend letters into sounds, which is one of the building blocks of reading.

Notes:
– While the phonics screening materials are provided to Catholic and Independent schools in SA, these data are not collected by the Department for Education.

The Phonics Screening Check has been tested across all SA government schools since 2018.
Since the introduction in 2018, there have been a major increase in achieving at or above the expected score, 21% in 2018 vs 44% in 2023.

Data Source: Phonics Screening Check, Department for Education, South Australia

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is an annual assessment for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Students’ NAPLAN scores are used to place them in one of four proficiency standards for each assessment domain in their year level. The 4 proficiency levels 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.

This report focuses on the sum total of the percentage of students who fall within the “Exceeding”, “Strong” and “Developing” proficiency levels, termed in our report as “At or above year level standard”.

In 2024:

Click the legend to include other states

• SA is roughly on par with the national average in Aboriginal students achieving at or above year level standard in all domains.
• In 2024, 65.4% of SA Aboriginal students were at or above year level standard in numeracy, 67.9% in reading and 72.2% in writing, in comparison with national averages of 67.2% in numeracy, 66.5% in reading and 70.5% in writing.
• SA has a higher percentage of students at or above year level standards for all testing domains than Qld (except in numeracy), WA and NT.

In 2024, SA Aboriginal students scored at or above year level standard:

• Year 3:
  68% for Numeracy, 64% for Reading and 64.3% for Writing.
• Year 5:
  68.6% for Numeracy, 68.7% for Reading and 66.4% for Writing.
• Year 7:
  81.5% for Numeracy, 69.8% for Reading and 65.9% for Writing.

In 2024, Aboriginal students from very remote areas of SA were 40% lower in students receiving at or above year level standard compared to SA’s state average: 69% vs 41%.

Note: The percentage of Year 9 students achieving at or above the national minimum standards in reading, writing and numeracy are reported in the preparing for adulthood dimension.

Data Source: Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)