The state’s Year 9 students had the worst test results of all other jurisdictions, except for Tasmania and Northern Territory.

Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace says the regulator Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority has suggested to her their “washing” or scaling of NAPLAN results is skewing the data.

“I do have concerns that the lower participation rates for NAPLAN this year have had an impact on the data,” Grace said in a statement on Monday.

“We know the preliminary NAPLAN results couldn’t be published as planned in August for this very reason.

“I am also concerned about all the washing of the data that takes place and what this means for the reliability of the results, which I hope to raise at the next Education Ministers’ meeting.”

Grace also said students had been impacted by the delayed start to the school year due to a Covid-19 outbreak peaking, and by flooding disasters.

“I’m not going to worry too much about this year’s data, we had a delayed start to school, it’s been a very disruptive year,” she told ABC Radio.

“I’m just very glad we’ve gone through it and that we’ve held steady.”

The opposition said Queensland’s results have been jeopardised by teacher workforce shortages and poor resourcing.

Liberal National Party education spokesperson Christian Rowan accused Grace of opportunistically attacking standardised testing, saying she has praised the results when Queensland students had done better.

“Once again, when Labor is exposed as losing control of something, instead of working to improve results, they attack the test,” he said in a statement.

“The Palaszczuk Government no longer listens and it is our Queensland students who are paying the price.”