The six-year learning gap dividing WA students

West Australian students who come from advantaged backgrounds could be more than six years ahead of their peers when it comes to learning outcomes, new research suggests.For the first time, researchers have developed a methodology to convert NAPLAN scores into equivalent years of learning to paint a clearer picture of the gap between students from different socioeconomic groups, instead of comparing students by achievement bands or results.Student reading levels across NAPLAN testing.Advantaged students were considered to have parents who had obtained a bachelors degree or higher, while disadvantaged students were those with parents who did not complete school.Parents’ level of education is often used as a proxy for a students’ socioeconomic background in combination with other variables, according to Andres Molina, a senior research fellow at the Centre for International Research on Education Systems.Molina led the new research, which compiled 17 years’ worth of NAPLAN data to look at how inequalities and gaps in student learning outcomes were behaving over time.“There’s large and persistent learning gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students,” he said.“Those gaps have been growing over time, and these widening gaps are mostly due to disadvantaged students faring worse over time compared to the average Australian, and that these inequalities are a feature of schooling in all Australian states and territories, including Western Australia.”Molina pulled the figures, released by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, from the reading section of NAPLAN testing between 2023 and 2026 for WA students.He then translated that data into years of learning. Year 3 students from disadvantaged backgrounds were more than two years behind their peers from advantaged backgrounds in 2026’s results.By year 9, that gap had widened to six years and eight months.“The gaps grow as students progress through school, so the gaps are low in year three, and they tend to increase as students move in their school journey,” Molina said.“There’s theories about why that happens. One is that disadvantage compounds over time, and students who have difficulties mastering certain subjects and skills have a harder time achieving more sophisticated or advanced skills that come later on.“It could also be that there is a greater concentration of disadvantage in secondary schools. A lot of parents make choices and move schools between primary and secondary based on the privilege or the opportunities that those schools will give for further education.“That creates a strong, uneven distribution of students, and that produces a double disadvantage.”It’s not all bad newsStudents in general across WA perform at a slightly lower level than the rest of Australia when compared to students of a similar background, according to Molina, but in the past five to six years that situation has changed for disadvantaged students.“They are performing slightly better than the rest of their peers, resulting in actually lower gaps than the ones observed for Australia,” he said.To improve the situation further, Molina said it was important to acknowledge there was an uneven distribution of students, and to examine the policies behind it.“That ties to funding, to competition between schools for students, the selective entry schools, all those mechanisms help create a divided school system,” he said.“If a school is not the preferred choice of parents, their enrolments reduce, they have high teacher turnover, and they face more difficult conditions.“But changing this takes time and we need to help those schools that are suffering from this situation currently.”Molina said he was an advocate of “full-service schools”, which would mean they operate to provide wraparound services across many other areas that have not been the traditional work of the schools.“So we’re talking about health, wellbeing, food, all sorts of services that help remove the barriers to learning that disadvantaged students face so that these students can come to school ready to learn,” he said.“We need national and state frameworks, which are supported with long-lasting funding because as soon as the funding is not there, these initiatives die.”From our partners