Australia's 72-point PISA science gap narrowed by 16 points since 2022

The 72-point science gap and the 16-point rise come out of the same dataset, and putting them together fixes the 2022 gap at about 88 points ^[1][3][15]. The narrowing since then is roughly a fifth of where the gap started ^[15]. PISA averages sit near 500 points ^[2], so the 16-point move is about 3% of the scale ^[21].

Whether the same population improved is a separate question. PISA draws a fresh sample of 15-year-olds each cycle ^[7], so a subgroup average can shift when the composition of the subgroup shifts. The analysis reports the point differences without standard errors or the size of the Indigenous sample ^[18]. In reading and maths the pattern is different again: Indigenous scores held steady while non-Indigenous scores dipped ^[4], so the narrowing there came from the non-Indigenous side falling ^[19].

The 2024 study led by Peter Anderson changed the comparison group. A pooled comparison asks whether two populations score differently, and when they start from different places it answers yes every time. Matching Indigenous students to Indigenous peers who shared similar starting points asks whether a given school moved its students. Across a decade of NAPLAN data, some schools and systems showed real, sustained gains that the conventional comparison had missed ^[5][6].

The starting points are documented in the PISA data itself. Eighty per cent of the Indigenous students who sat the most recent test came from the lowest two socioeconomic quarters, and half from the lowest quarter alone ^[8]. The analysis attributes the difference to access and resourcing, not aptitude or ability ^[9]. That is a claim about confounding, and it is the reason a raw gap between two populations fails as a measure of what students can do.

PISA's construct belongs to the OECD: how well 15-year-olds apply what they know to real-life challenges ^[7]. The analysis proposes a different benchmark, drawn from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The General Assembly adopted the declaration in September 2007, and Australia voted against it before endorsing it in April 2009 ^[12]. Article 14 sets out the right of Indigenous peoples to establish and control their own educational systems and to teach in their own languages and cultural methods ^[13]. The questions that follow from it are answerable: whether Indigenous languages are resourced as languages of instruction, and whether Indigenous knowledge is in the curriculum as a distinct and equally valid form of knowledge ^[20]. Studies cited in the analysis find Australia has not adequately incorporated those rights into its education system ^[17]. Anderson and colleagues' 2022 synthesis of 51 studies found a pervasive lack of teacher readiness, curriculum readiness and school culture readiness to teach Indigenous students ^[11].