Hey, mums and dads, your kids are counting on you to solve this NAPLAN problem

August 5, 2026 — 2:25pm

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Another year, another NAPLAN, and regular as clockwork my phone is buzzing. “Adam, our kids are going backwards at maths at a rapid rate.”

The year 3 NAPLAN results, released on Wednesday, have been described as “clearly concerning” – and they are. More than a third of NSW year 3 students are behind where they need to be in the crucial early stages of learning to live with numbers.

A third are also not meeting benchmarks in reading, writing, grammar and punctuation. But I’m a maths nerd, and that’s where I can help.

Yes, we need teachers who are more comfortable teaching maths. Yes, the pedagogy practitioners will dissect how maths is taught in our classrooms. And it wouldn’t surprise me if overreliance on iPads as babysitters has diminished our kids’ sense of curiosity and powers of attention. Further, when year 3 students in outer regional NSW fare worse at numeracy benchmarks than kids in the cities, closing that gap........

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