A new review of 10 million NAPLAN writing results have revealed that most year 9 students have the same English writing standards as Year 7’s.

The review further showed that 85% of students are struggling to keep up with the general writing standards, with many Year 9’s using similar punctuation to children in Year 3.

Adam Voigt, CEO of Real Schools told Oliver Peterson on Perth Live that these results were not surprising.

“We have probably taken our eye off the ball nationally for some time now. We’ve had a really significant focus around reading and that probably means that writing has taken a backwards step,” Mr Voigt said.

“There is this society thing that kids don’t use writing the way that they used to, so the practice time they have on it has been compromised. So this is where we need to put our attention and work because this is a skill that our kids will need.”

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