A fresh study has reinforced the significance of touch-typing as a key skill for primary aged students, indicated in a previous study and now shown through NAPLAN results.
Schools showing moderate to high usage of the typing tutor Typing Tournament showed superior performance at NAPLAN – an average advantage of almost 7.1 NAPLAN units.
School-level results for the 2023 NAPLAN Year 5 Writing task were obtained from public sources for 66 schools. In this task students compose a written piece in response to a specific challenge. In 2023, all schools participated
on-line for this task – that is, the writing was via keyboard.
School average results for the writing task were compared to the “similar background” rating for the school in this task, leading to the reported advantage of 7.1 NAPLAN units. This means that this large sample of schools and students performed well above expectation.
For the study, 66 schools were sampled from the Typing Tournament subscriber schools showing the highest rates of usage in relation to the number of students enrolled in the school. This sample represented approximately 34 300 students, with around 4200 of those in Year 5. Some 730 000 Typing Tournament logins were detected across 16 months from these schools.
As found in our previous study, the sample of schools was a wide cross-section of Australian schools. There were 48 primary schools, ranging in roll size from 100 to 1100. Of these, 13 schools were in the Catholic sector and 7 were other private schools. There were also 18 combined primary-secondary schools, all private, ranging in size from 300 to 1200. All six states were represented from Queensland (29) to Tasmania (3) and one school from the Northern Territory.
There was a very broad socio-economic basis across these schools, as reflected in the NAPLAN “similar background” comparison (taking account of parental education and occupation plus school remoteness and indigeneity, school sector and size), with the range from 414 to 534, compared to the All Australian average of 483. Actual school averages ranged from 411 to 570.
In 2024, touch-typing ability is a skill for life. It will be used from middle-primary school years and throughout the rest of school life. Further education and most occupations will also involve keyboard skills, as will many other
day-to-day activities. This is reflected in the Australian Curriculum standards (link) which mandate keyboard tuition. However, it would be fair to say that adoption has been patchy.
In response to teacher and parental concern, marking of the NAPLAN Writing task is designed to remove the benefits of typing ability from student results, so that no one is penalised. The observation of advantages from typing means that the actual advantages are very real, and their true magnitude is likely to be higher than reported.
Typing Tournament is a structured and progressive framework for typing tuition. The student works at their own pace with minimal teacher input.
