Increasingly, education commentators are of the view that complacency has settled over Canberra's NAPLAN results, preventing any real aspirational thinking about reading, writing and arithmetic.

Certainly, this week's NAPLAN 2016 Summary Report suggests not only have we become complacent, but we risk falling behind.

The new data shows the ACT coming first in just 14 of 20 domains. At first blush, 14 first places looks pretty decent.

But unpicking the data shows that not only is it the worst performance for the territory since testing began in 2008, but our so-called supremacy on test scores is something of a smokescreen. All those first places are but a hair's width above the other states and territories. In six domains they are categorically behind.

Crucially, these results do not reflect our incredible socio-educational advantage – born of a small, largely white-collared and upwardly mobile population.

Former Productivity Commission economist Trevor Cobbold has been warning of stagnation in educational results for the ACT for more than a decade.

He notes that the ACT has many advantages over other jurisdictions in factors that influence school results. It has higher average income and parent education levels than elsewhere. It has fewer disadvantaged students and less extreme poverty. The average socio-economic status of students and schools in the ACT is much higher than in other states. All its schools are in the metropolitan area; it has no remote area students. Average school (public and private) income per student is higher than any other jurisdiction except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

And despite these considerable advantages, average NAPLAN results for the ACT are not significantly better than for Australia and several states – not even keeping up in some cases.

The raw statistics show the ACT between 1 and 3 per cent above the national average on all measures.

That is a wafer thin margin of so-called supremacy given some of the entrenched disadvantage systems such as the Northern Territory, WA and Tasmania contend with, and where indigenous, remote and impoverished children find the odds stacked against them learning to read, write or do maths.

So who is to blame?

Federal Minister Simon Birmingham was quick to point the finger at the states and territories, noting a substantial increase in Commonwealth funding over the last year. Ignoring lag times necessary for systemic improvements, he still has a point.

Coalface improvements in practice and policy lie with each jurisdiction's governments and their bureaucrats.

Perhaps a large part of the ACT's problem has been the annual orgy of self-congratulatory rhetoric from our education ministers each time we come out ahead (ever so slightly) ahead of the pack. The press releases are always the same, "ACT shines/continues to dominate/performs well in literacy and numeracy."

To his credit, our latest Education Minister Shane Rattenbury is having none of it. Not long into the job, he has already commissioned detailed work on ACT NAPLAN performance. Unlike his predecessor Joy Burch, he seems genuinely aware of the mismatch between the ACT's potential, and its results.

As the ACT heads to another election this year dependent on its knowledge-based economy and burgeoning reputation as a university city, whoever takes the portfolio after October should turn their mind to the issue as a matter of urgency. Or there may come a day when ACT education performance is a point not of pride but of shame.