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The Conventions Paradox
Grammar and punctuation is, by a clear margin, the weakest literacy domain Australian students sit in secondary school. In the 2025 NAPLAN cycle only 56.4% of Year 9 students reached 'Strong' proficiency or above in grammar and punctuation, the lowest figure of any domain tested that year, well behind spelling's 71.9% [WRI-07]. That weakness is not a snapshot; it is a decade-long trend. AERO's analysis of ten years of NAPLAN writing data found that for secondary students specifically — Years 7 and 9 — the criteria that deteriorated over time were Punctuation, Sentence Structure, and Vocabulary, a genuinely different pattern from the primary years, where the decline concentrated in Text Structure and Persuasive Devices instead [WRI-03]. Spelling, tellingly, was the only criterion in that whole study that improved [WRI-03] — a distinction that matters, because it means 'conventions' is not one uniform problem. Something is going right in spelling and going wrong in the sentence-level mechanics of grammar and punctuation, at exactly the age Argo's students are sitting scholarship and selective-entry exams.
The picture at Year 3 shows the same shape lower down the age range. Grammar and punctuation was the weakest of all five NAPLAN domains for that cohort too in 2025, with 81.1% of students reaching 'Developing' proficiency or above against a high of 92.4% in writing [LAN-02]. And this is not a domain in visible motion, up or down: the Australian Bureau of Statistics's own wellbeing dashboard shows Year 3 grammar-and-punctuation scale scores essentially flat across the first three post-reset NAPLAN cycles — 410.8, then 408.8, then 408.4 — with spelling similarly flat over the same period [LAN-03]. So the honest description is not a domain in crisis or a domain recovering; it is a domain stuck low, consistently, at both ends of the school system.
It is worth pausing on how that low result gets reported, because this register's own verification process caught a case of the story running ahead of the data. The Guardian's coverage of the 2025 results claimed 39.2% of students performed 'below expectations' in grammar and punctuation nationally, and glossed this as students 'struggling to recognise verbs and pronouns in sentences' [LAN-01]. On direct verification, that specific 39.2% aggregate could not be located anywhere in ACARA's own National Results Commentary, which reports only per-year-level breakdowns, and the 'verbs and pronouns' framing turned out to be the journalist's own editorialising, not a quote attributed to ACARA at all [LAN-01]. The figure was downgraded accordingly rather than repeated as an official statistic. That correction is itself part of the evidence here: even a widely reported, plausible-sounding number needs to be traced to its primary source before it does any work in an argument, and grammar and punctuation — being the domain most prone to alarming, simplified headlines — is a live example of why.
There is also a gender pattern specific to this domain that deserves its own weight. A longitudinal study of NAPLAN spelling and grammar-and-punctuation results from 2008 to 2021 found girls outperformed boys at every tested year level, in every year of testing, across the full fourteen-year span [LAN-09]. The grammar-and-punctuation gap was wider than the spelling gap at every point, and it widened with age — from roughly half a year of equivalent learning at Year 3 to well over a year by Year 7 [LAN-09]. More strikingly, while the spelling gender gap closed in more recent testing years at every level, the grammar-and-punctuation gap only closed at Years 3 and 5; at Years 7 and 9 it widened instead [LAN-09]. Boy cohorts made two years of equivalent progress between tests only once across the entire study, on grammar and punctuation, and fell behind fastest between Years 5 and 7 [LAN-09] — precisely the transition years where Argo's scholarship-preparation work concentrates.
So the weakness is real, persistent, and worse for boys as they move into secondary school. The paradox is what the intervention evidence says about fixing it. The same Writing Next meta-analysis that identifies effective writing interventions found that grammar instruction produced a small but statistically significant negative effect on writing quality, both for the general student population and for low-achieving students specifically [WRI-14]. The meta-analysis's own synopsis does not spell out exactly what counted as 'grammar instruction' in the studies it pooled, but the wider Writing Next literature describes this finding as applying to grammar taught as a subject in its own right — parsing sentences, naming parts of speech — rather than grammar knowledge applied directly to a student's own writing. On that reading, drilling grammar in isolation does worse than fail to help; it measurably hurts. What does work, in the same meta-analysis, is sentence combining: teaching students to build more complex sentences by joining simpler ones produced a moderate, statistically significant effect on writing quality (effect size 0.50), with an almost identical effect (0.46) for low-achieving students specifically [WRI-12]. The lesson is not that grammar knowledge is irrelevant — it is that the same content, taught as a rule to memorise versus a tool to build sentences with, appears to produce opposite results.
Two further findings round out what actually moves this domain. Spelling — the one criterion in the AERO decade study that improved rather than declined [WRI-03] — has its own strong, direct evidence base: a United States meta-analysis of 53 studies and over 6,000 students found formal spelling instruction produced a moderate-to-large effect on spelling accuracy (ES = 0.54 against no instruction, 0.43 against informal approaches) and, notably, a large effect on generalisation into students' own writing (ES = 0.94) [LAN-06]. That generalisation figure is the one worth underlining: spelling taught formally does not stay confined to a spelling test, it shows up in the student's actual prose. Morphological instruction — teaching prefixes, suffixes and root words — carries a related benefit across literacy outcomes generally, with particular benefit for less able readers [VOC-07], giving students a transferable strategy for both spelling and unfamiliar vocabulary rather than a fixed list to memorise.
Put together, the practice implication is specific rather than vague. Conventions should not be taught as a standalone drill divorced from a student's own writing — the evidence says that approach can actively backfire [WRI-14]. It should be taught where the sentence-level and vocabulary declines actually live: inside the writing itself, through techniques like sentence combining that build grammatical control by using it [WRI-12], reinforced by the kind of formal, structured spelling and morphology instruction shown in United States and United Kingdom research to generalise into real prose [LAN-06] [VOC-07]. That is where accuracy and quality meet — not in a worksheet of underlined verbs, but in a sentence a student has just built, made stronger, and can now build again.
In the 2025 NAPLAN cycle, the national Year 3 cohort's proportion of students achieving 'Developing' proficiency or above ranged from a low of 81.1% in grammar and punctuation (the weakest of all five NAPLAN domains at Year 3) to a high of 92.4% in writing, per ACARA's official 2025 National Results Commentary. This is a Year-3-specific figure, not an all-year-level national aggregate.
On average across domains, 87.3% of Year 3 students achieved results in the Developing proficiency level or above, ranging from 81.1% in grammar and punctuation to 92.4% in writing.
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority · NAPLAN 2025 National Results Commentaries · ACARA / National Assessment Program (NAP) · 2025
Peer-reviewed / causalVerified 2026-08-24#LAN-02
ABS's official 'Measuring What Matters' wellbeing indicator dashboard reports that average Year 3 NAPLAN grammar-and-punctuation scale scores were essentially flat from 2023 to 2025 (410.8 to 408.8 to 408.4), while average Year 3 spelling scale scores also stayed essentially flat (403.7 to 401.4 to 405.1) -- both domains showing negligible change across the first three post-reset NAPLAN cycles, per ABS's own stated finding that 'there has been little change in average Year 3 NAPLAN scores for literacy and numeracy across all five testing domains' since 2023.
Since 2023, there has been little change in average Year 3 NAPLAN scores for literacy and numeracy across all five testing domains, including reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy.
Literacy and numeracy skills at school · Australian Bureau of Statistics (Measuring What Matters framework) · 2025
Peer-reviewed / causalVerified 2026-08-24#LAN-03
Graham & Santangelo's 2014 meta-analysis of 53 experimental/quasi-experimental studies (6,037 students, kindergarten to Grade 12) found that formal spelling instruction produced a moderate-to-large effect on spelling accuracy versus no/unrelated instruction (ES = 0.54) and versus informal/incidental approaches (ES = 0.43), a large effect on generalisation to spelling within students' own writing (ES = 0.94), and smaller but still meaningful transfer effects to phonological awareness (ES = 0.51) and general reading skills (ES = 0.44). The meta-analysis also found a benefit from increasing the amount of formal spelling instruction (ES = 0.70) and that spelling gains were maintained over time (ES = 0.53).
Despite the importance of spelling for both writing and reading, there is considerable disagreement regarding how spelling skills are best acquired... The corpus of 53 studies in this review included 6,037 students in kindergarten through 12th grade and yielded 58 effect sizes (ESs)... Results provided strong and consistent support for teaching spelling, as it improved spelling performance when compared to no/unrelated instruction (ES = 0.54) or informal/incidental approaches to improving spelling performance (ES = 0.43). Increasing the amount of formal spelling instruction also proved beneficial (ES = 0.70). Gains in spelling were maintained over time (ES = 0.53) and generalized to spelling when writing (ES = 0.94). Improvements in phonological awareness (ES = 0.51) and reading skills (ES = 0.44) were also found. The positive outcomes associated with formal spelling instruction were generally consistent, regardless of students' grade level or literacy skills.
Steve Graham, Tanya Santangelo · Does Spelling Instruction Make Students Better Spellers, Readers, and Writers? A Meta-Analytic Review · Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal (Springer), Vol. 27, Issue 9, pp. 1703-1743 · 2014
Peer-reviewed / causalVerified 2026-08-24#LAN-06
A peer-reviewed longitudinal study (Thomas, Swain, Walton & Hicks 2023, International Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 120, DOI 10.1016/j.ijer.2023.102207) analysing Australian NAPLAN language conventions (spelling, and grammar and punctuation) results from 2008 to 2021 found that girls in all four tested year levels (3, 5, 7, 9) outperformed boys on every spelling and grammar-and-punctuation test in every year of testing across the full 14-year period. The grammar-and-punctuation gender gap was wider than the spelling gender gap at every year level and in every year tested, and widened with age: averaged across all tests, the gap was 0.46 years of equivalent learning at Year 3, 0.71 years at Year 5, and 1.24 years at Year 7 (spelling gaps were smaller throughout: 0.32, 0.46, and 0.80 years respectively at Years 3, 5, and 7). While spelling gender gaps closed at every year level in more recent testing years, grammar-and-punctuation gaps closed only at Years 3 and 5 and instead widened at Years 7 and 9. Girl cohorts made at least two years of equivalent learning progress between consecutive tests in every case; boy cohorts never did so for spelling and did so only once for grammar and punctuation (between the Year 7 and Year 9 tests), with boys falling behind girls fastest between Years 5 and 7.
Girls in all four year levels outperformed boys on every spelling and grammar and punctuation test for every year of NAPLAN testing... For students in all tested year levels and for every year of NAPLAN testing, the gender gap for grammar and punctuation was wider than for spelling. The spelling gender gaps in all tested year levels closed in recent years of testing. The grammar and punctuation gender gaps in Years 3 and 5 closed in recent years, while the gaps widened in Years 7 and 9... Girl cohorts in each tested year level made at least two years of progress between NAPLAN spelling and grammar and punctuation tests, while boy cohorts never made two years of progress between any spelling test and only once between grammar and punctuation tests (i.e., between the Year 7 and Year 9 tests). Boys made the least progress in both tests and fell behind girls at the fastest rate between Years 5 and 7.
Damon P. Thomas (University of Queensland), Nathaniel Swain (La Trobe University), Jack Walton (University of Queensland), David Hicks (University of Tasmania) · Patterns in literacy gender gaps: Examining longitudinal data on boys' achievements in the Australian NAPLAN test · International Journal of Educational Research (Elsevier), Vol. 120, Article 102207 · 2023
Peer-reviewed / causalVerified 2026-08-24#LAN-09
The EPPI-Centre's 2004 systematic review of ten in-depth experimental studies (UK, US and New Zealand; students aged 5 to 16) concluded there is no high-quality evidence that teaching formal grammar or syntax, whether traditional parts-of-speech instruction or transformational-generative grammar, improves the quality or accuracy of students' written composition.
The results of the present in-depth review point to one clear conclusion: that there is no high quality evidence to counter the prevailing belief that the teaching of the principles underlying and informing word order or 'syntax' has virtually no influence on the writing quality or accuracy of 5 to 16 year-olds. This conclusion remains the case whether the grammar teaching is based on the 'traditional' approach of emphasising word order and parts of speech; or on the 'transformational' approach, which is based on generative-transformational grammar. / In terms of practice, the main implication of our findings is that there is no high quality evidence that the teaching of grammar, whether traditional or generative/transformational, is worth the time if the aim is the improvement of the quality and/or accuracy of written composition.
Richard Andrews, Carole Torgerson, Sue Beverton, Terry Locke, Graham Low, Alison Robinson, Die Zhu (EPPI-Centre English Review Group) · The effect of grammar teaching (syntax) in English on 5 to 16 year olds' accuracy and quality in written composition · EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London · 2004
Peer-reviewed / causalVerified 2026-09-11#LAN-10
The EPPI-Centre's companion 2004 in-depth review of 18 studies (17 US, one Canadian; mostly grades 4 to 10) concluded that sentence-combining instruction is an effective means of improving the syntactic maturity of students' writing, with immediate post-test effects positive and somewhat tempered at delayed post-test; taken with the formal-grammar review, the review team's stated policy implication is that teaching formal grammar is ineffective and sentence-combining is one method that is effective.
An overall synthesis of the results from the 18 studies examined in the in-depth review comes to a clear conclusion: that sentence combining is an effective means of improving the syntactic maturity of students in English between the ages of 5 and 16. / In the most reliable studies, immediate post-test effects are seen to be positive with some tempering of the effect in delayed post-tests. / the main implication for policy of the current review is that the National Curriculum in England and accompanying guidance needs to be revised to take into account the findings of research: that the teaching of formal grammar (and its derivatives) is ineffective; and the teaching of sentence combining is one (of probably a number of) method(s) that is effective.
Richard Andrews, Carole Torgerson, Sue Beverton, Terry Locke, Graham Low, Alison Robinson, Die Zhu (EPPI-Centre English Review Group) · The effect of grammar teaching (sentence combining) in English on 5 to 16 year olds' accuracy and quality in written composition · EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London · 2004
Peer-reviewed / causalVerified 2026-09-11#LAN-11
Andrews and colleagues' 2006 peer-reviewed synthesis of two international systematic reviews found little evidence that teaching formal grammar improves the quality and accuracy of 5-to-16-year-olds' writing, and a more positive effect for teaching sentence-combining, while cautioning that after more than a century of research the evidence is not of sufficient quality to prove the case for either approach.
The results show that there is little evidence to indicate that the teaching of formal grammar is effective; and that teaching sentence-combining has a more positive effect. In both cases, however, despite over a hundred years of research and debate on the topic, there is insufficient quality of research to prove the case with either approach.
Richard Andrews, Carole Torgerson, Sue Beverton, Allison Freeman, Terry Locke, Graham Low, Alison Robinson, Die Zhu · The effect of grammar teaching on writing development · British Educational Research Journal, 32(1), 39-55 · 2006
Peer-reviewed / causalVerified 2026-09-11#LAN-12
A 2012 English national study including a blind-randomised controlled trial of 744 secondary students in 31 schools found that grammar taught in context, explicitly linked to the teaching of writing, produced a statistically significant positive effect on students' writing, with the benefit experienced more strongly by the more able writers in the sample; the authors describe it as the first robust evidence of a positive benefit from grammar teaching.
The RCT involved 744 students in 31 schools in the south-west and the Midlands of England, and was a blind randomisation study. / The statistical results indicate a significant positive effect for the intervention, but they also indicate that this benefit was experienced more strongly by the more able writers in the sample. / The study is significant in providing robust evidence for the first time of a positive benefit derived from the teaching of grammar, and signals the potential of a pedagogy for a writing which includes a theorised role for grammar.
Debra Myhill, Susan Jones, Helen Lines, Annabel Watson · Re-thinking grammar: the impact of embedded grammar teaching on students' writing and students' metalinguistic understanding · Research Papers in Education, 27(2), 139-166 · 2012
Peer-reviewed / causalVerified 2026-09-11#LAN-13
ACARA's NAPLAN Assessment Framework describes the conventions of language test as two sections -- spelling, then grammar and punctuation -- where the spelling section is delivered partly as AUDIO DICTATION (the word and its context sentence played through an audio file, typed into an answer box) and partly as proofreading, the first section locks once a student moves to the second, and roughly two-thirds of the second section is grammar rather than punctuation.
The NAPLAN conventions of language tests are made up of 2 sections: a spelling section followed by a grammar and punctuation section. The first section is locked once a student moves to the second section. ... In the audio dictation component of the test, a context sentence is presented to students with a blank space in place of the spelling word. The spelling word, along with the context sentence, is provided to students via an audio file. Students type their responses into an answer box. ... Approximately two-thirds of items in this section of the test consist of grammar items, with the punctuation items making up the remaining third.
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority · NAPLAN Assessment Framework · Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority · 2026
Official / governmentVerified 2026-09-15#LAN-14
The Guardian's reporting on the 2025 NAPLAN national results (30 July 2025, citing ACARA's release) stated that four in ten (39.2%) students performed below expectations in the grammar and punctuation domain, and framed this -- as the journalist's own gloss, not a direct ACARA quote -- as students 'struggling to recognise verbs and pronouns in sentences.' This specific 39.2%-below-expectations aggregate figure could not be located as a single stated number in ACARA's own 'NAPLAN 2025 National Results Commentary' PDF, which instead reports per-year-level breakdowns only (see verification notes); it is presented here as a Guardian-attributed statistic, not confirmed as ACARA's own headline figure.
Results found four in 10 (39.2%) students performed below expectations in grammar and punctuation, indicating they struggled to recognise verbs and pronouns in sentences.
Caitlin Cassidy · One in three students fail to meet Naplan benchmarks as disadvantaged fall behind · The Guardian Australia · 2025
Large-N industryVerified 2026-08-24#LAN-01
A confidential 2018 NSW Department of Education briefing paper (obtained by the Australian Education Union under freedom of information and reported by the ABC) found that NAPLAN spelling results were specifically disadvantaged when students sat the test online rather than on paper -- Years 3 and 5 online spelling scores fell 5 points compared with a 2-point rise for paper-test students, and Year 9 online spelling students were also disadvantaged -- while online testing in grammar and punctuation, writing, and numeracy showed the opposite pattern (an advantage for online test-takers over paper-test-takers). This finding describes the PRE-2023-RESET NAPLAN test design and should not be presented as describing the current online testing regime without that caveat.
In spelling, students in years 3 and 5 were also disadvantaged if they sat NAPLAN online, with their scores down by five points compared with a two-point rise for those who sat the traditional version. Year 9 students who sat the NAPLAN spelling test online were also disadvantaged. However, in the numeracy, writing, and grammar and punctuation tests, online schools were advantaged compared with schools whose students did pen-and-paper tests.
NAPLAN: Differences do exist between online and pen-and-paper test results, document reveals · ABC News, reporting on a NSW Department of Education internal briefing (obtained by the Australian Education Union via FOI) · 2018
Large-N industryVerified 2026-08-24#LAN-04
ACARA's device effect study, run before NAPLAN moved online, reported that the test can be taken on laptops or tablets without pervasive device effects across content domains, item types and year levels — the study did record some limited device effects, which it described as small, not pervasive, and centred on specific item types and features -- and that the key factor influencing how students interact with online items is their FAMILIARITY with the device they are using, not the device itself.
NAPLAN online is capable of being taken on a range of devices (laptops and tablets), without device effects across content domains, item types and year levels ... the key factor influencing students’ interaction with online items and tests is their familiarity with the device that they are using to complete the tests ... There were some limited device effects, which were small, not pervasive, and centred on specific item types and features.
Davis, L. L., Janiszewska, I., Schwartz, R., & Holland, L. (Pearson), for ACARA · NAPLAN Device Effects Study (literature review and field trial) · Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority · 2016
Large-N industryVerified 2026-09-15#LAN-15
Cite any finding by its anchor — for example #LAN-02 — and the link resolves to the claim, quote and source above. The verification protocol lives on the register’s main page.
