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This report examines the performance, and levels of mastery, on tests of reading comprehension and numeracy of Australian students in junior secondary school between 1975 and 1995. Data were drawn from two national monitoring studies and other studies of representative samples of junior secondary school students designed to monitor the progress of young people through school into further education, training and work. In each of the studies, students completed tests that are similar to those conducted in the Australian states and territories and overseas to monitor student performance. Although both the reading and numeracy tests were not identical over time they included a substantial number of common items, which allowed the construction of single measures of achievement in reading and numeracy. The analyses reported include: comparisons of the percentage of students correctly answering common items; the mean levels of achievement and percentage of students attaining mastery at different times; and comparison