What does international assessment tell us about educational attainment in Australia?

In our contribution to the inquiry into the factors driving educational attainment, ACER has drawn on evidence from the OECD's International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS 2025) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2022), along with the IEA’s Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2021) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 2023).

We’ve summarised some of our key findings and recommendations below.

Educational attainment is a lifecycle issue

One of the strongest findings that emerges from the evidence is that educational attainment cannot be understood at a single point in time.

Rather than being driven by a single factor, educational attainment reflects the intersection of early learning, socio-economic circumstances, school and classroom experiences, student engagement and broader contextual influences across a learner's life.

Outcomes observed in adolescence (such as PISA results) are often the continuation of patterns that begin much earlier. International evidence shows that differences in learning and development are already evident by age 5, while later assessments demonstrate how these early differences can continue through primary and secondary schooling.

Disadvantage adds up

Across all the international evidence, socio-economic background emerges as a major influence on attainment.

New analysis of PIRLS conducted specifically for the inquiry found that almost half of students with a combination of three risk factors (few books in the home, attendance at a non-metropolitan school and attendance at a disadvantaged school) did not meet the reading proficiency standard. TIMSS identified even worse achievement gaps in mathematics associated with compounded disadvantage.

By age 15, PISA data demonstrates the consistency of the strong relationship between socio-economic background and achievement across reading, mathematics and science. Students from more advantaged backgrounds are more likely to achieve at higher levels, while students experiencing disadvantage remain disproportionately represented among those who do not reach minimum proficiency standards.

Gender difference is a factor, but one of many

International assessments also show that gender differences in educational attainment exist across some learning areas, but these patterns are not uniform.

Evidence from IELS indicates that girls demonstrate stronger achievement than boys across all domains of learning and development at age five. In PIRLS 2021, female students outperformed male students in reading literacy, with a greater proportion reaching Australia's proficiency standard.

PISA continues to show a longstanding pattern in which female students perform more strongly in reading literacy, while male students tend to achieve higher results in mathematical literacy. However, differences vary across subjects, year levels and assessment cycles, highlighting the importance of understanding gender outcomes within their broader educational context.

The evidence suggests gender should not be viewed as a fixed explanation for educational outcomes, but instead part of a patchwork of different characteristics that impact learning.

School climate and quality teaching make a difference

The international evidence also points to the importance of what happens inside schools.

TIMSS, PIRLS and PISA all show strong associations between achievement and factors such as school discipline, safety, belonging, attendance and student engagement. Students who learn in orderly, supportive and well-managed environments generally achieve stronger outcomes than those in less positive learning settings.

Recent PISA analysis further shows that students who feel supported by their teachers report a stronger sense of belonging at school and achieve higher academic results, including in mathematics. High-quality teaching also appears to have the potential to reduce socio-economic achievement gaps.

The findings highlight that educational attainment is influenced not only by curriculum and assessment, but also by the quality of relationships, behaviour, engagement and learning conditions experienced by students every day.

What we’ve recommended

Our strategy for improving educational attainment centres around a connected, system-wide approach that spans the entire learning lifecycle. For our submission, we identified the following as policy priorities:

1. Governments should adopt a whole-of-lifecycle early literacy strategy that starts before school, strengthens oral language and emergent literacy in the early years, ensures access to evidence-based teaching of foundational literacy in the primary years, and supports educators to use developmentally appropriate pedagogy matched to learners’ stage of development and level of expertise
2. Consider aligning responsibility for the early childhood and school education portfolios under a single Minister in jurisdictions to support more coherent policy, funding and accountability across the learning lifecycle.
3. Education systems should embed universal screening, diagnostic assessment and targeted intervention through coherent, system-wide frameworks to enable early identification and prevent long-term underachievement.
4. Governments should support schools to embed coherent, system-wide approaches to behaviour, safety and belonging as core levers of instructional quality, recognising school climate as a fundamental driver of educational attainment and equity.
5. Embed consistent, high-quality assessment across the full learning lifecycle to support early identification, targeted intervention and continuous improvement in outcomes.

Read ACER's full submission here.