Who actually sits NAPLAN.
Withdrawal from NAPLAN is a parental choice, and in Victoria in 2026 it ran roughly three times higher among the least advantaged families than the most advantaged — the opposite of the common assumption that opting out is a middle-class protest.
Withdrawal from NAPLAN is a parental choice, and it runs roughly three times higher among the least advantaged Victorian families than the most advantaged — not, as often assumed, the other way around.
This is not an argument about whether withdrawing is right or wrong — it is a legitimate, ordinary choice. It is an observation about who makes that choice, and what that means for how the published results should be read.
Four different things, one missing score
A student without a NAPLAN result is missing for one of four distinct reasons, and the reasons matter because each one is decided by a different person, for a different cause.
| Category | Decided by | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Assessed | — | The student sat the test. |
| Withdrawn | Parent | A parent or guardian chose to withdraw the child. |
| Exempt | School | The school exempted the student, generally for significant disability or recent arrival with English as an additional language. |
| Absent | — | The student was away on the day the test was sat. |
Withdrawn and exempt look similar from the outside — both mean a student who was enrolled and expected to sit the test did not — but they have opposite causes. Withdrawal is chosen by a parent, usually for a child with no particular support need. Exemption is granted by a school, usually for a child who does have one. Conflating the two erases exactly the distinction that matters for reading the data honestly.
Who actually withdraws
In Victoria in 2026, in the Reading domain, pooled across Years 3 to 9 and enrolment-weighted, withdrawal was highest among families where a parent’s highest qualification was Year 11 or below, and lowest among families where a parent holds a bachelor degree or above.
Withdrawal by parental education: Year 11 or below 4.19% against Bachelor or above 1.22% — a ratio of roughly 3.4 to 1.
By parental occupation the pattern repeats: 4.61% withdrawn among families with no parent in paid work in the past 12 months, against 1.20% among senior managers and professionals — a ratio of roughly 3.8 to 1. The national ratio on this same comparison is smaller, roughly 2.6 to 2.7 to 1, so Victoria’s gap on this measure is wider than the country’s.
The pattern is not confined to withdrawal alone. Absence and exemption both follow a broadly similar shape by parental education — the “Year 11 or below” group also records the highest absence rate (7.20%) and the highest exemption rate (8.28%) of any education band in this data. All three routes out of the sat-test count are heaviest at the same end of the distribution.
The gap is widening, slightly
Between 2023 and 2026, withdrawal fell for the more advantaged parental-occupation groups but rose for the least advantaged one — the “not in paid work for 12 months” group increased by 0.10 percentage points over that period. Moving in opposite directions from an already wide starting gap means the gap in who withdraws is not closing; it is widening, slightly.
Exemption has moved in its own direction over the same period. Nationally, the exemption rate rose from 1.69% in 2023 to 1.85% in 2026. Because exemption is a school decision tied to disability or English-as-an-additional-language status rather than a parental choice, this rise is a different story from the withdrawal pattern above — but it adds to the same total effect: a growing share of enrolled students not represented in the sat-test results.
Why every published gap is probably too small
This is the analytical point that follows from everything above, and it is worth stating carefully rather than as a slogan. NAPLAN’s published achievement gaps — between parental-education groups, between advantaged and disadvantaged postcodes, between any two groups compared in the results — are calculated only from students who actually sat the test. Withdrawal, absence and exemption are not spread evenly across the population: all three are more common among less advantaged families, which means the students missing from the count are drawn disproportionately from the lower-scoring end of the distribution.
Remove disproportionately more low-scoring students from the disadvantaged group than from the advantaged group, and the average score of the remaining disadvantaged group rises relative to what it would have been with full participation. The measured gap between groups shrinks accordingly. None of this is a criticism of the students or families involved — withdrawal in particular is a legitimate choice a parent is entitled to make, for entirely reasonable reasons. It is a description of what happens to a comparison when the groups being compared have different, uneven rates of participation: the comparison is conservative. The real gaps in the population NAPLAN is trying to describe are almost certainly wider than the published figures show, not narrower.
Should you withdraw your child?
There is no admissions or enrolment consequence either way, at your child’s current school or anywhere else. Honestly, the decision rarely matters much for the child. NAPLAN is not a gate to anything, and a missing result does not follow a student anywhere that matters.
If the concern behind considering withdrawal is test anxiety rather than a principled objection to the test itself, it is worth trying the cheaper fix first: talk to the school about accommodations, do a practice sit at home so the format is familiar, and remind your child directly that nothing is admitted or decided on the result. Withdrawal removes the test; it does not address anxiety that will resurface at the next timed assessment that does matter, whether that is a school exam, a selective entry test, or eventually VCE.
If, having weighed that, you still want to withdraw your child, that is a legitimate choice and this page is not an argument against making it.
Sources
- Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), NAPLAN national results dataset, 2026.Every score, percentage, effect size and classification quoted across these pages.
- ACARA, NAPLAN proficiency level descriptions.Definitions of the four levels: Needs additional support, Developing, Strong, Exceeding.
- ACARA, NAPLAN 2025 Technical Report, pp. 86–87.The effect-size and nature-of-difference methodology: the 0.2 and 0.5 thresholds separating “close to”, “above” and “substantially above”.
- ACARA, NAPLAN (National Assessment Program), and the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, NAPLAN assessments.What the assessment is, who sits it, and how it is administered in Victoria.
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