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, 43% in 2018 vs 71% in 2023.

In 2023:

• Individuals from non-metro schools had a lower screening results than individuals from metro schools: 65% vs 73% in 2023 scored at least the expected achievement.
• IoED stands for The Index of Educational Disadvantage and is a socio-economic index used by the Department for Education to allocate resources to schools to address educational disadvantage related to socio-economic status. The lower the number for IoED the higher the educational disadvantage: 1 describes individuals with the highest educational disadvantage and 7 describes the lowest educational disadvantage.
• Only 47% of students from the highest educational disadvantage (IoED = 1) category scored at least the expected achievement, compared to 80% of students from the lowest educational disadvantage (IoED = 7).

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 percentage of students who fall within the ‘Needs additional support” proficiency level.

In 2024:

• Click the legend to include other states.
• SA is slightly worse than the national average in students needing additional support for all three test domains: numeracy, reading and writing.
• In 2024, 10% of SA students received “Needs additional support” in numeracy, 10.7% in reading and 8.7% in writing, in comparison with national averages of 9.2% in numeracy, 10.1% in reading and 8.3% in writing.
• SA has a lower percentage of students receiving “Needs additional support” for all testing domains than Qld, WA, TAS and NT.

In 2024, SA students scored within the “Needs additional support” proficiency level:

• Year 3:
  9.9% for Numeracy, 11.6% for Reading and 4.6% for Writing.
• Year 5:
  9.4% for Numeracy, 9.3% for Reading and 9.2% for Writing.
• Year 7:
  10.6% for Numeracy, 11.2% for Reading and 12% for Writing.
• Roughly 10% of students are needing additional support across the three domains, with the visual difference of writing: Year 3 half the number of students needing additional support.

In 2024:

• Male students in SA had a higher proportion of “Needs additional support” than female students in SA: 11% vs 8.3%.
• Students from very remote areas of SA were four times likely to score within the “Needs additional support” compared with students from metropolitan areas of SA: 34% vs 8.3%.
• Parental education and Parental occupation had the same pattern across SA students: students with parents who have higher levels of education or work are less likely to “Need additional support”. 3.6% of students whose parents have a bachelor degree scored within the “Needs additional support” vs 25% of students whose parents highest education level is Year 11.

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)