See the best performing NAPLAN schools near you

Serpell Primary School principal Wilma Culton is in no doubt that parents pay close attention to the school’s NAPLAN results each year.

“Oh yes, our parents are very conscious of it,” Culton said. “They want to make sure that their child is receiving a high-quality education, so the NAPLAN results are important to them.”

Teacher Mitch Thorp with year 6 students at Serpell Primary School in Templestowe.Credit:Wayne Taylor

Evidently, families like what they see.

Serpell is a zoned public school in Templestowe in Melbourne’s east, far away from major urban growth corridors, yet has almost 1200 students, one of the largest primary school enrolments in the state.

When the MySchool website was updated with the test results for 2022 on Wednesday, it contained more good news for Serpell, which had the fifth-strongest set of numbers in Victoria.

Each school’s NAPLAN data on student progress in literacy and numeracy is adjusted for socioeconomic and educational profile, and Serpell is in the top 3 per cent in the country, meaning its parents are, in the main, highly educated and well remunerated.

This means its students’ progress in reading, writing and numeracy is ranked on MySchool against students with similar profiles, many of whom attend high-fee private schools.

Just one of those schools, Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Burwood, achieved stronger NAPLAN results than Serpell between 2019 and 2022.

Culton said the culture of parents was integral to the school’s top-tier academic performance.

“I’m sure there are a lot of high-achieving schools with a similar kind of a profile, but we have particular advantages. I mean, high-quality staff, a really high-quality community, and just fantastic children who want to do well,” Culton said.

“And it’s really important that the school matches the expectations of the community. All of our parents would expect their children to have a university education and so they’re very, very keen to make sure that they all do their best.”

Serpell Primary School and Presbyterian Ladies’ College are both in Melbourne’s inner east, which is a hot spot for high-performing NAPLAN schools, claiming three of the top five results in Victoria according to the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s results data between 2019 and 2022.

Across Melbourne, three western suburban schools also ranked in the 10 best NAPLAN performers in the state over the past four years. The three schools, all of which have disadvantaged student profiles, achieved stellar progress in literacy and numeracy when ranked against similar schools.

Braybrook College principal Kelly Panousieris (left) and maths co-ordinator Rebecca Thom in the school’s numeracy centre.Credit:Jason South

Braybrook Secondary College principal Kelly Panousieris said a growing number of the school’s parents are taking an interest in its NAPLAN results as the suburb becomes more gentrified, though others were less aware of the standardised test.

“I’m not going to go out there and say, ‘hey look at our great NAPLAN results’,” Panoursieris said.

“That is just one area of the tailored literacy and numeracy support that we offer the children.”

At Kings Park Primary School in St Albans, the “why” of teaching is as important as the “how”, principal Jodi Park said.

Park asked staff this year to share why they worked at the disadvantaged and multicultural school. Her own mantra is “to ensure that all students are literate and numerate and not defined by their postcode”.

Park said her school, one of Victoria’s best performing in NAPLAN, had invested in educational support staff, English language support staff and tutoring in literacy and numeracy.

“I think it’s something that’s ensured that those grade 3 results are really strong because we have a lot of students who start with us who might not be speaking English,” she said.

“A lot of our students, even though we have take-home readers, families can’t often support their children with that, so the education support do that at lunchtime.”

Park said the school prides itself on its “relentless tracking of students”.

Every student sets themselves reading, writing and numeracy targets for each semester, and is tested on their progress every three weeks.

“So there’s no surprises when we get to reporting time,” she said. “What we’ve been focusing on is having individual goals so students are aware of what their goals are, they have a greater chance of achieving them.”

Two hours north of Melbourne, in the northern Victorian town of Mooroopna, Catholic primary school St Mary’s has had its best two years of NAPLAN testing, raising its results to be one of the best performing schools in the Shepparton region, with most students making above-average progress in literacy and numeracy.

It wasn’t always like this. Five years ago, St Mary’s students made below-average progress when measured against students across Australia who were at a similar level.

Principal Anthony Butts said the school had purposely invested more in its literacy and maths programs, and “really worked hard to develop a culture that promotes learning”.

“We have a really strong belief that every student is capable of successful learning,” Butts said. “We work really hard to make sure that no student slips through the cracks and that all students have the opportunity to succeed at whatever level they’re at.”

This approach means taking a differentiated approach to learning, working with students who are struggling to master the basics until they have mastered early stages of learning, rather than pushing them up to the next level.

The MySchool website crashed on Wednesday morning and experienced regular dropout throughout the afternoon, as the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s servers struggled to keep up with a spike in traffic.

The authority’s chief executive, David de Carvalho, said the website always experienced a spike in traffic when the annual MySchool data is released, but said there was little evidence NAPLAN results have a widespread influence in parental decisions about which school to send their children to.

“If you were wanting to draw a strong link between information that’s on the MySchool website and parent choice, you would probably be seeing a stronger uptick of visits to MySchool at about the time of year when parents are making decisions about where to send their children,” de Carvalho said. “We don’t actually see that kind of pattern.”

NAPLAN results will be overhauled this year, with education ministers in all states and territories agreeing this month to simplify the reporting of results.

Proficiency standards in literacy and numeracy, which have until this year been measured over 10 bands, will be narrowed to four levels of achievement, with a baseline benchmark to identify students who are struggling.

Students’ individual results in the standardised test will be ranked either as exceeding, strong, developing or needs additional support.

The test will be held in March this year instead of May, meaning schools, parents and carers will receive results earlier in the school year and have more time to act on students’ strengths and weaknesses.

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