Accounting for language background differences in the Australian national assessments – literacy and numeracy

This study examines language background differences in the Australian National Assessments – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), and the extent that language background differences are accounted for by socioeconomic background, schools and contemporary influences. There are sizable, sometimes very large, differences in performance by language background. Students with Eastern and Southern Asian language backgrounds exhibited high, sometimes very high, mean scores, whereas students with African, Central Asian and Pacific language backgrounds had relatively low mean scores. Language background differences tended to be larger for numeracy than for reading. Parental occupation and education accounted for some of the effects of language background for some groups, but not for Asian groups. Generally, language background effects cannot be attributed to the unequal distribution of language background groups across schools. When considering students' prior achievement, most language background effects, including all language backgrounds with strong negative effects, were reduced substantially often to statistical insignificance. The exceptions are Chinese and other East Asian and Southern Asian language backgrounds.