5 August 2026
The 2026 NAPLAN results show the proportion of Aboriginal students with ‘Strong or Exceeding’ results in Reading and Numeracy has increased, and the proportion of Aboriginal students with ‘Needs Additional Support’ results have decreased compared to 2025.
The results reinforce the Finocchiaro CLP Government’s commitment to getting back to basics through the Boosting Literacy and Numeracy Plan.
Every Northern Territory government school is implementing Explicit Teaching as part of the plan.
The Finocchiaro CLP Government is continuing to drive education reform by raising school attendance and boosting literacy and numeracy by getting back to basics in their year of growth, certainty and security.
The 2026 NAPLAN results released today by ACARA (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) show the Northern Territory has decreased the proportion of students in ‘Needs Additional Support’ from 35.6% in 2025 to 33.6% this year for ‘Reading’ and from 36.2% to 34.2% for ‘Numeracy’ over the same period.
In the first year of the CLP Government’s ‘Boosting Literacy and Numeracy Plan’, schools have adopted the Explicit Teaching model to give every student a stronger foundation in literacy and numeracy.
Across all five testing domains of Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation and Numeracy, there are less Aboriginal students classed as “Needs Additional Support”.
The proportion of Aboriginal students who recorded a ‘Strong or Exceeding’ result for Reading and Numeracy have also increased compared to 2025 results.
Minister for Education and Training, Jo Hersey, said while the results are starting to trend in the right direction, there is a lot more work to do.
“These results reinforce why we are so focused on Explicit Teaching that we are delivering through the Boosting Literacy and Numeracy Plan,” Minister Hersey said.
“Explicit Teaching is evidence based, it’s catchy for the students, and our Schools that have adopted the teaching practice for a few years now have seen fantastic results – that’s why we’re rolling it out to every school in the Territory as part of our Boosting Literacy and Numeracy Plan.
“We’ve got School Attendance Officers to get kids to school, we’re getting careers counsellors into schools, more teachers are on permanent contracts, school counsellors are back in schools to look after students’ wellbeing and we are delivering record funding to Territory Schools in partnership with the Federal government through the Better Fairer Schools Agreement.”
The overall participation rate dropped to 76.5% due to 15 schools not participating as the testing period was during the March floods.
Consistent with previous years, ACARA uses a statistical imputation process to calculate results for students who did not participate. ACARA’s imputation methodology uses available assessment and student information to statistically estimate plausible results for all Australian students.
The 2026 NAPLAN results can be accessed here. [https://www.acara.edu.au/naplanresults]
