NAPLAN Year 9 Reading — Methodology and Sources
What this measures
Victorian Year 9 mean scaled score on the NAPLAN reading test, by calendar year. The NAPLAN scale runs roughly 0–700; the national Year 9 average sits in the high 500s. Higher is better.
How values are derived
Each year's NAPLAN National Report publishes Table TS.R15 ("Achievement of Students in Reading, Vic"), which gives the Year 9 mean scaled score and standard deviation for the most recent ~6 years plus 2008 as a baseline. The values in this chart are read directly from those tables:
| Year | Mean | Source report |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 585.5 | 2019 National Report, Table TS.R15 |
| 2015 | 586.2 | 2019 National Report, Table TS.R15 |
| 2016 | 583.9 | 2019 National Report, Table TS.R15 |
| 2017 | 582.4 | 2019 National Report, Table TS.R15 |
| 2018 | 588.5 | 2019 National Report, Table TS.R15 |
| 2019 | 585.6 | 2019 National Report, Table TS.R15 |
| 2020 | — | NAPLAN was not administered (COVID-19) |
| 2021 | 582.1 | 2022 National Report, Table TS.R15 |
| 2022 | 584.6 | 2022 National Report, Table TS.R15 |
Overlapping years (2016–2019) match exactly across the two reports, providing a cross-check.
Why the series ends at 2022
ACARA replaced the NAPLAN scaled-score bands with proficiency levels in 2023 and rebased the underlying scale. ACARA explicitly cautions that pre-2023 and 2023+ NAPLAN figures are NOT directly comparable. Rather than splice incomparable series, this chart truncates at 2022 (the last comparable year) and stops there.
Caveats
- NAPLAN 2020 was cancelled (COVID-19). The series shows a gap that year.
- Series ends at 2022 because of the 2023 scale change — see above.
- Mean scaled score smooths individual student variation; it can mask distributional shifts (e.g., the tail dropping faster than the median).
- Year 9 chosen as the brief-specified cohort; Year 3/5/7 trends differ.