The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) has launched a new assessment designed to identify literacy difficulties in Foundation and Year 1 students before learning gaps widen, as national data shows reading and writing scores continuing to slide.
PAT Early Literacy measures three components of early reading separately:
- phonics and related skills
- listening comprehension
- reading comprehension
Students progress through narrated, story-led digital activities guided by animated characters. They complete assessments with minimal adult supervision while teachers receive detailed reporting on each child's development.
ACER senior assistant director of assessment development Sandra Knowles said early years assessment must balance rigour with classroom practicality. "One of the biggest challenges in early years assessment is balancing meaningful evidence with what is practical in the classroom," she said.
"PAT Early Literacy has been designed so young learners can engage with minimal supervision, reducing the administration burden on teachers while giving them reliable information about how each student is developing and where support may be needed."
Gaps found in NAPLAN literacy results
The tool's launch follows the 2026 National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results released on 5 August 2026. It showed reading and writing performance declining across most year levels even as numeracy improved for students in Years 5, 7 and 9.
More than 1.3 million students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sat the assessment, according to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). Roughly one-third failed to meet expected baseline proficiency, falling into the "Developing" or "Needs Additional Support" categories.
Writing performance was particularly weak among the youngest cohorts tested, with fewer than 10% of students in the lowest two-year levels reaching the "Exceeding" benchmark.
ACER's release positions early literacy assessment as a way to identify students' skills and potential gaps during the first two years of formal schooling. At this stage, foundational reading abilities are developing rapidly. PAT Early Literacy therefore provides an assessment point before NAPLAN, which begins in Year 3. ACER says the assessment is designed for Foundation and Year 1 students and measures phonics and related skills, listening comprehension and reading comprehension.
ACER's tool comes at a time when several jurisdictions already use early literacy screening. South Australia introduced a Year 1 phonics screening check in 2018. Marshall Roberts, chair of national dyslexia advocacy group Code REaD, said the state's own screening data shows around one in three children still are not meeting essential reading benchmarks by the end of Year 1. He also warned that a shift toward constructivist teaching approaches risked undermining earlier gains in literacy.
Separate decoding from comprehension
The Listening Comprehension and Reading Comprehension components adapt in real time, with a student's answers to an initial set of questions determining the difficulty of subsequent ones. ACER said this keeps students working at an appropriate challenge level without extending testing time.
Knowles said separating the three literacy domains gives teachers a clearer diagnostic picture than a single combined score. "Reading is more than phonics alone," she said. "By assessing phonics and related skills, listening comprehension and reading comprehension separately, teachers can better understand what is driving a student's literacy development and make more informed decisions about next steps."
The tool distinguishes between students who decode words accurately but struggle to understand what they read, and those who need support with foundational decoding. Reading Comprehension results are reported on the existing PAT Reading achievement scale, letting schools track literacy growth from Foundation onward on a single, continuous measure.
PAT Early Literacy was developed by ACER's literacy, assessment and psychometric research teams and is now available to schools.