The ACT has seen no significant improvement in NAPLAN results since embarking on the Strong Foundations program.
Results have largely remained stagnant at a territory level across reading, writing, spelling, and grammar and punctuation despite a push to improve consistency of literacy teaching in the early primary school years.
However, there was an uptick in student achievement in numeracy in years 5, 7 and 9 this year which follows a national trend of increasing numeracy scores.
Centre for Independent Studies education fellow Trisha Jha said on the surface the ACT appeared to be doing well compared to other states.
But when you look at how students from different backgrounds performed, there was a significant achievement gap.
"Outcomes for the children of low-educated parents and in low-skilled or no paid employment are pretty flat, so I would say that we're not necessarily seeing the benefits of the Strong Foundations reforms and the inquiry findings just yet."
The ACT and Victoria lead the nation on most domains.
Ms Jha said the ACT should be further ahead considering the higher level of socio-educational advantage and higher funding levels per student.
When looking at the reading results for year 3 students who have parents who left education in year 11, the ACT achieved an average score of 335.6 while Victoria had an average of 354.7.
Ms Jha said the 19-point difference between the two states for this cohort was significant and showed the ACT needed to act with urgency to roll out Strong Foundations.
"The response from the ACT government should be to look at these results and say we actually need to move forward on our implementation and making sure that... we are leaving no stone unturned when it comes to delivering those evidence-based outcomes," she said.
"In such a small system like in the ACT, it should be eminently possible to do this."
An Education Directorate spokesperson said there were 87 year 3 students with a parental education of year 11 or below who participated in NAPLAN reading this year, compared to 3191 students in Victoria.
"The difference in performance of Year 3 ACT and Victorian students with a parental education level of year 11 or below, in reading, is not statistically significant," the spokesperson said.
"The ACT has a higher mean score for this student group compared to the NSW and the Australian average (also not a statistically significant difference)."
The spokesperson said the Strong Foundations program was being implemented over four years, starting in 2025.
"It is being rolled out through a trial, test and learn approach, and we know education reforms take time to translate into student outcomes.
"Evidence shows it can take several years for new teaching practices to be consistently embedded across schools and reflected in system-level results."
The Strong Foundations program aims to help every public school to deliver a consistent approach to learning based on evidence-informed practices.
The ACT committed to certain reforms under the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement with the federal government.
As part of this funding agreement, the ACT has mandated the PAT Early Years Maths testing in public schools from this year. All public schools also administer the PAT Early Years Reading check as well as the Year 1 Phonics check.
The spokesperson said the results of the Year 1 phonics check would be published in its annual report, a significant change from its original position of not publishing the results for fear of it becoming a "high-stakes test".
The directorate is also considering options to publish Year 1 numeracy results, the spokesperson said.
Alfred Deakin High School principal Brian Downton said his school's NAPLAN results showed improvement in numeracy and writing.
The school is in the fourth year of a five-year plan to improve teaching of writing across all subjects based on evidence-informed pedagogy.
"I think this is just a great example that if you do one thing really well, you actually do a number of things well," Mr Downton said.
"So it's not surprising to see improvements in multiple areas when you've got that great data-informed practice and you've got some evidence-based pedagogy happening that you do see results improving in more than just that writing area."
Mr Downton said the school had programs to provide intervention to help students catch up in literacy and numeracy as well as extension opportunities.
"[At a] public school, the beauty is you get all abilities, and [for] every student we want growth. So, whether it's additional support or extension, there's a wide range of strategies and approaches that we've got to do that."
Year 7 students Miller Vincent and Sheetal Gupta said they were happy with their NAPLAN results.
Their advice for students doing the tests next year was to stay calm and read the questions thoroughly.
"It's just a test. You've just got to stay calm and not freak out," Miller said.
"It's not that difficult. You've just got to pay really close attention to what they're asking," Sheetal said.
