For all the reforms that have been poured into improving students’ literacy outcomes in recent years, the dial has barely shifted on the one skill that shows most clearly whether a student can think for themselves – writing.
This year’s NAPLAN results show the share of Year 3 students at ‘Strong’ or above in writing fell by about three percentage points, while fewer than one in 10 students in the two youngest cohorts exceeded the benchmark. More troubling still is the trend at the other end of the scale, where since 2023, the number needing additional support in writing has crept up.
Read more: How These Schools Pulled Ahead of the NAPLAN Writing Trend
So, what has been holding students back, and why has this crucial skill been so easy to overlook?
Distinguished Professor Pamela Snow, a cognitive psychologist who first trained in speech pathology, the La Trobe University SOLAR Lab co-director, has spent decades examining how oral language underpins children’s success in reading, writing and spelling.
She says writing is a “deceptively demanding” skill.
“It requires the development and coordination of complex cognitive, linguistic, and sensor-motor processes,” Professor Snow told The Educator. “It is not simply reading reverse-engineered; in fact, it is a more complex set of skills than reading.”
Professor Snow said teaching of writing subskills has suffered from the same lack of specificity that has applied to reading instruction in recent years.
“The most significant barrier has been teachers not being supported in their preservice education to teach these skills explicitly,” she said. “Students’ early use of technology in classrooms has been an unhelpful disruption that needs to be reversed.”
The hidden cost of a fast-paced world
Strathcona Girls Grammar School Principal, Lorna Beegan, says the national slump in writing skills reflects a convergence of factors, but at its core lies "a diminishing appreciation for writing as a cognitively demanding and deeply human process."
"Writing draws on an array of complex skills such as planning, organising, evaluating, and synthesising ideas," Beegan told The Educator. "It thus requires sustained higher-order thinking to communicate meaning with clarity and purpose."
In a world increasingly driven by speed and superficial engagement, the time, effort, and discipline required for writing are often undervalued, says Beegan.
"Our fast-paced digital culture privileges immediacy over substance, encouraging short-form responses and multitasking rather than reflection and coherence," she said. "In this environment, writing becomes reduced to a functional task rather than a process of concentrated thinking and learning."
Strathcona's teachers take a whole-school approach to writing, embedding it purposefully across all subject areas. This includes the use of consistent frameworks, subject-specific scaffolding, and a strong emphasis on formative feedback.
"Our Junior School lays critical foundations through targeted literacy programs, while our Learning Enhancement team supports both intervention and extension at every stage of learning," Beegan explained. "Ongoing professional learning equips staff with evidence-informed strategies to teach writing explicitly."
Under these programs, the school has been seeing improved fluency, confidence, and engagement.
"This is especially the case when students feel ownership of their voice and understand the purpose behind what they’re writing," she said, adding that schools should seek to teach writing in every subject that students learn.
"Writing is one of the most powerful tools we have for thinking and learning. When students are given structured opportunities to write across all subjects, they deepen their understanding, organise their ideas, and practise discipline-specific forms of communication."
Less screen time, more original thinking
Dr Ian Hunter is an author, former university professor, and the founder of Writer's Toolbox, an educational writing system that gives students real-time, individualised feedback on their work, guiding them to improve their writing without ever doing it for them.
“We recently saw that Australian students’ PISA scores in reading and maths have declined, adding more pressure to an already overloaded workforce,” Dr Hunter told The Educator. “The trouble is, we’re demanding more from teachers than ever before, without showing them how to offer blended learning or mitigate the risks of a digital world.”
In September, Writer’s Toolbox unveiled a handwriting upload feature that lets students draft by hand, then sharpen their work online with personalised feedback from educational AI.
“The new feature allows teachers to return to pen and paper in their classroom, which helps students with metacognition, memory retention, and critical thinking,” Dr Hunter said. “Students can use the same evidence-backed frameworks within Writer’s Toolbox while reaping the benefits of writing by hand, which reduces their cognitive load and activates more regions in their brain.”
Not only does this help teachers meet government guidelines around screen time, but it ensures students are submitting original work.
“It will also save time—teachers will spend less time marking student work and students won’t use class time to type up their handwritten notes,” Dr Hunter said.
“Writer’s Toolbox can even make sense of messy drafts and scribbled or crossed-out text, using millions of data points to convert seemingly illegible handwriting into an accurate digital format. From there, it’s over to the student.”
Why students should read like a writer
Kathleen Killick is CEO of Seven Steps to Writing Success, an explicit, skills-based writing program used by more than 5,000 schools.
Killick said that when most students read, they do it for the story alone, rarely noticing the techniques authors use to engage, inform or persuade. For this reason, she argues that “reading like a writer” must be explicitly taught, with students first identifying those techniques in a mentor text, then trying them out in their own writing.
“Students follow the story, they enjoy it [or don't], but never stop to notice the techniques authors use to engage, inform or persuade them,” Killick told The Educator, adding that reading like a writer doesn't happen by accident. “Students need to be explicitly taught to spot those techniques in a mentor text, then experiment with them in their own writing.”
This doesn't need extra time, said Killick.
“One great mentor text can support both reading and writing, so teachers aren't planning two disconnected lessons,” she said. “It's also what the Australian Curriculum and state curricula ask for.”
Killick said linking reading and writing is not about adding something extra; it’s about making the curriculum's own intent easier to deliver.
“The science of reading has rightly had a lot of attention, but there is no science of reading without the science of writing,” she said. “When students read a mentor text knowing they'll borrow from it, they read differently.”
Killick said students are looking for how the author built suspense, why that sentence lands, and what makes the opening hook work.
“They’re reading like a writer,” she said. “That's why I don't see evidence and engagement as a trade-off.”
What disengages students isn't explicit teaching but a long slide deck where the teacher reads and the students watch.
“By the time anyone picks up a pencil, the energy has gone,” she said, adding that reading like a writer flips that.
“The evidence tells us to teach explicitly. Making students active participants is what makes it engaging.”
More than an education-only issue
As governments promise “once-in-a-generation” reform, Associate Professor Helen Adam, a leading literacy researcher and president of the Primary English Teaching Association Australia, argues this window won’t stay open forever, and warns that getting it wrong now means condemning another generation to the same avoidable gaps.
Associate Professor Adam said particular attention should be paid to whether the Teaching and Learning Commission addresses literacy and equity as an education-only issue or recognises that it requires cross-portfolio action supporting families.
She said positive signals include education departments partnering with community services to get books to disadvantaged families, policy support for programs like Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, and funding that gives under-resourced schools library staff and book budgets, not just intervention programs.
“Also watch the Commission's guidance documents. If they overwhelmingly emphasise explicit instruction without equally addressing culturally responsive practice and access to diverse books, the window is closing,” Associate Professor Adam told The Educator.
“Teacher standards should integrate responsive pedagogy throughout, not as separate competencies. Curriculum resources should provide flexible frameworks requiring adaptation, not standardised scripts.”
Associate Professor Adam said there is one warning sign school leaders cannot afford to ignore.
"If schools serving disadvantaged communities continue spending more time on isolated skills whilst advantaged schools provide books, choice, and reading time, and if policy rhetoric still centres only ‘explicit instruction,’ we've learned nothing and we’ve missed a once in a generation opportunity.”