“He just doesn’t write.” The gap is real, and it has a size.
Parents of boys notice this and then wonder whether they are imagining it, or being unfair to their son. They are not imagining it. The gap is measured every year by the national testing authority, and a peer-reviewed study has traced its shape across thirteen years of results. What follows is the number, where it comes from, and — just as importantly — what it does not mean about your child.
The short answer
In ACARA’s 2025 national results, at Year 9, 69.1% of girls reached “Strong” or above in writing, against 53.9% of boys. That is a gap of just over fifteen percentage points, in the country’s own census-scale test, published by the authority that runs it. At Year 7 the comparison is 71.1% against 57.0% — the same shape, slightly narrower.
In writing: Girls score 35.3 NAPLAN scale score points higher on average; 27.4% of girls achieve a level of Exceeding, compared to 16.3% of boys; 69.1% of girls achieve a level of Strong or above, compared to 53.9% of boys; 91.0% of girls achieve a level of Developing or above, compared to 82.7% of boys.
ACARA, 2025 NAPLAN National Results Commentary. Registered as WRI-08 in the evidence register.
It is not new, and it does not close on its own
The single-year figure could be a fluctuation. It is not. A peer-reviewed longitudinal study of NAPLAN language conventions from 2008 to 2021 found the pattern held in every year level, in every year of testing — and that the spelling gap narrowed while the grammar and punctuation gap in the secondary years did the opposite.
Girls in all four year levels outperformed boys on every spelling and grammar and punctuation test for every year of NAPLAN testing… 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.
Thomas, Swain, Walton & Hicks (2023), International Journal of Educational Research, vol. 120. Registered as LAN-09.
That last clause is the one worth sitting with. The gap that closed was the one in spelling — the most teachable, most drillable part. The gap that widened was in grammar and punctuation at Years 7 and 9, which is the part that governs whether a sentence can carry a complicated idea. It widened at exactly the age when school starts asking for complicated ideas.
What this does not say about your son
A population gap is not a prediction about a person, and it is worth being exact about the difference, because the exactness is the reassurance.
- More than half of boys reached Strong or above. 53.9% is a majority, not a failure. The gap is real and it is also a gap between two large groups that overlap almost entirely.
- It says nothing about capacity. Neither source offers a cause. The studies measure an outcome; they do not claim boys are less able to write, and no honest reading of them supports that.
- It is not a statement about one test day.Your son’s result is one timed piece written on one morning. What a single report can and cannot show sets out the limits of that number.
And one thing parents often get wrong in the other direction
The common follow-up worry is that writing generally is collapsing. The register complicates that. AERO found a real decline — but in one genre only.
There has been an overall decline in student achievement of persuasive writing skills. Average (mean) scores for Persuasive writing demonstrate a downward trend since 2011 with the decline more pronounced in the secondary years (Years 7 and 9).
AERO (2022), Writing development report. Registered as WRI-01.
In the same report, narrative writing did not follow suit: Year 3 slightly improved, Year 9 remained stable, and the movement in between was not statistically significant (WRI-05). So “writing is in decline” is too broad a sentence to be true. Persuasive writing in the secondary years is the specific thing that fell, and it is the specific thing worth teaching.
What actually moves it
Not practice tests. The gap that widened is in grammar, punctuation and the structure of an argument at Years 7 to 9 — which is to say, in sentences. That is built by writing sentences and having them read closely by someone who can name what went wrong, weekly, over terms rather than weeks.
If you want to see the shape of it before committing to anything: the writing clinic works one sentence at a time and is free to read, and the NAPLAN writing test explained sets out what the marking criteria actually reward.
A first, honest read of your son’s writing.
Twenty minutes, free, no obligation — what his writing is actually doing, and the one thing that would move it next.
Weekly one-to-one writing lessons, Years 3 to 9 — what a term looks like →