Critics will greet today’s new Naplan results with the usual appallathon, taking attention away from new ANU research looking at data from 2012-2016.

Law professor Andrew McIntosh and colleague Debra Wilkinson compared ACT schools and schools “in other jurisdictions” with the same socio-economic profile.

They found ACT schools were outperformed on writing and numeracy at all measured ages. Over two-thirds of results in 75 per cent of ACT government schools were below the equivalent outcomes of statistically similar schools. The outcomes were much the same in the non-government sector, with 70 per cent having a minimum 66 per cent or above of average results below equivalent schools around the country.

“Learning outcomes are not solely linked to resourcing. The ACT has some of the best resourced schools in the country but their students are still underperforming,” Mcintosh and Wilkinson write.