Australia will reintroduce pen-and-paper writing tests for Year 5 pupils from 2028, following mounting concerns that excessive screen time and digital technology are undermining children’s learning outcomes. The decision, reached by the country’s education ministers, means pupils will sit the writing component of the National Assessment Programme – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) on paper rather than on computers.
A Shift Back to Handwriting
South Wales Deputy Premier and Education Minister Prue Car said there was growing evidence that heavy screen exposure was affecting students and their academic performance. She explained that ministers across the country had agreed to work towards Year 5 NAPLAN writing being completed with pen and paper, adding to Year 3, which already uses paper-based assessment.
Car is also advocating for the writing assessments in Years 7 and 9 to return to paper. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which administers NAPLAN, is expected to advise ministers on that proposal.
Explaining the rationale, Car said students perform better when writing by hand than when typing on screens. She noted that the decision rests on evidence about how children learn, and that making the assessment paper-based would require more classroom time to be spent with pen and paper rather than on computers.
Declining Results and Screen Time Concerns
The change comes amid wider anxiety about declining academic performance among Australian pupils. Recent international assessments have highlighted challenges in literacy, numeracy and students’ use of digital devices. Australian students recorded their worst-ever results in the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment, which compares educational performance across countries.
That assessment found Australian students spent an average of 2.6 hours daily using digital devices, compared with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average of 1.7 hours. NAPLAN results have also consistently shown that about one-third of Australian students are not meeting what education authorities describe as challenging but reasonable expectations in foundational literacy and numeracy.
Mixed Reaction From Campaigners and Academics
The Heads Up Alliance, a grassroots movement of parents campaigning against screen time, welcomed the proposed changes but called for more comprehensive reforms. Its founder, Dany Elachi, described the decision as a step in the right direction while arguing that more needed to be done to reverse the decline in educational standards. He said Australia’s Digital Education Revolution of 2008 had, in effect, been a vast experiment on children, and that the results of that experiment had become impossible to ignore.
La Trobe University Distinguished Professor Pamela Snow also backed calls for a broader reassessment of technology use in schools, arguing that its adoption had moved faster than the available evidence supporting its benefits. She said the application of technology in education had got well ahead of the evidence, and that stopgap measures tinkering around the edges downstream could not continue. Snow added that technology was introduced into classrooms too quickly and has now become normalised, making it difficult to wind back and calibrate its use. She said she was not aware of any actual evidence that technology has enhanced students’ learning.
Broader Digital Detox Plans
Car said education ministers had also agreed to begin work on a broader digital detox initiative for Australian classrooms. State and territory ministers and the Commonwealth have agreed to start work on the plan. In New South Wales, screen time limits in classrooms will be mandatory from 2028, phased in from preschool to Year 12 and the HSC year.
Education ministers are expected to release a communique later in the week outlining further reforms, including a proposed federal super commission partly aimed at addressing concerns over Year 12 dropout rates. Ministers are also considering reforms to the primary school mathematics curriculum and additions to the national curriculum to address anti-Semitism.
