Reading numbers aloud, a central aspect of numerical literacy, is a challenging skill to acquire, but the origins of this difficulty remain poorly understood. To investigate this matter, we examined the performance of 127 third- and fourth-grade children who read aloud, in Hebrew, numbers with 2-5 digits. We found several key observations. First,…

The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is intended to assess all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to ensure equity and inclusion. This paper explores the extent to which equity and inclusion are achieved for students with disability through NAPLAN reporting. Document analysis of publicly accessible NAPLAN…

Relative age effects (RAEs), where older children within an age-based group have better academic, sporting, self-concept and mental health outcomes than their younger peers, have been demonstrated in multiple countries. Australian research has found self-concept and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder RAEs, but academic RAEs have not been…

This paper is the third in a series of Analytical Insights papers, which provide accessible, up-to-date analysis of educational datasets. The insights in this paper are drawn from the latest National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy in Australia (LLANIA) data to discuss student participation…

This study examines how school-level and student-level factors influence primary school dropout in Burkina Faso. School-level factors were found to have a moderate effect in grade three and a small effect in grade five, while student performance on end-of-term class tests significantly affected students' decisions to drop out in both grades. Other…

In this study, we examine children's National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) achievement predictors, which may enable or limit their numeracy performance and assess the relative importance of the predictor variables. Our data source was the NAPLAN numeracy results of Queensland schools from 2014 to 2017. Years 3 and 5…

A higher proportion of students are privately educated in Australia, compared with many other nations. In this paper, we tested the assumption that private schools offer better quality education than public schools. We examined differences in student achievement on the National Assessment Programme: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) between public,…

Socioeconomic status (SES) has been found to moderate the influence of genes and the environment on cognitive ability, such that genetic influence is greater when SES is higher, and the shared environment is greater when SES is lower, but not in all Western countries. The effects of both family and school SES on the heritability of literacy and…

In Australia, under the National Assessment Plan, educational accountability testing in literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) is undertaken with all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to monitor student achievement and inform policy. However, the extent to which these data have been analysed to report student progress is limited. This article reports a…

This paper is the second in a series of Analytical Insights papers, which provide accessible, up-to-date analysis of educational datasets. It is the first in a series that uses the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)'s new Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy in Australia (LLANIA) dataset to explore educational questions. The paper…

This paper is the first in a series of Analytical Insights papers, which provide accessible, up-to-date analysis of educational datasets. This insights paper draws on the latest National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) data to discuss student participation and engagement with the tests -- factors which impact the quality and…

The early years from birth to age 8 are a crucial period for children's learning and development. High-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) and continuity from ECEC into school provide children with a strong foundation for lifelong learning. Understanding how language and cognition skills develop during this period of a child's life…

This document summarises key findings and recommendations from an analysis of Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) data conducted by the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) in 2022. AERO's report marks the first time that the skills considered through the Language and Cognitive Skills (school-based) domain in AEDC have been…

Extant work on the importance of children's executive function (EF) for academic skills typically employs either direct assessments of EF skills or adult reports of children's EF behaviors. Each approach has advantages, yet few studies have examined how different EF measurement approaches distinctly relate to child outcomes. We examined how direct…

Australian children from regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas exhibit lower educational outcomes than their peers in metropolitan areas. The mechanisms driving the comparatively poorer educational outcomes of children in RRR areas, however, are not well understood. This paper proposes and tests two sets of factors that may be responsible for…