2023 NAPLAN rankings revealed for schools in Adelaide’s southern suburbs

One southern Adelaide primary school made a huge leap in this year’s NAPLAN rankings, rising dozens of places. See how every school ranked.

Shashi Baltutis

3 min read

December 15, 2023 - 11:23AM

The Messenger

Why you can’t compare 2023 NAPLAN results to previous years

Schools Hub

Don't miss out on the headlines from Schools Hub. Followed categories will be added to My News.

Dreams come big at a small primary school in Adelaide’s southern suburbs, where students want to be everything from a tech company owner to a secret spy.

And their NAPLAN results back up their students’ lofty ambitions.

Pilgrim School in Aberfoyle Park, with just 160 students, has risen up the primary school rankings from 56 last year to 26 in 2023.

Year 5 student Lana, who wants to be a spy, said NAPLAN was made “very easy” by her teachers.

“My teacher made sure we knew lots of different methods to find the best way we could solve problems ourselves,” the 11-year-old said.

Pilgrim School, along with IQRA College, are Adelaide’s top-performing NAPLAN schools in the southern suburbs.

See how every SA school ranked here.

An independent analysis of newly-released 2023 NAPLAN results has revealed the SA schools that performed the best in the year 5 and year 9 tests.

Pilgrim School had the best primary results than any other school in the Adelaide south, scoring an average of 523.0 this year.

Lana’s classmate, Josiah, who wants to be a tech company owner after school, said he feels “really good” about his results.

“My teacher taught me some good strategies to help answer the questions,” the 11-year-old said.

Student Ella, 11, who wants to be a teacher, said while some questions were “tricky”, practice questions eased her anxiety.

Pilgrim School year 5 students Lana, Josiah and Ella with principal Andrew Edmondson. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Principal Andrew Edmondson said the school’s success was, in part, due to their “passionate teachers who are committed to seeing kids flourish”.

“Over these past five years we’ve focused on … how to take a task and adapt a task to give kids success at whatever level they’re at,” Mr Edmondson said. “A lot of schools teach to the middle.”

As a result, he said the school’s students are engaged in their learning.

“They set goals, they’re engaged and they’re motivated to improve as well,” Mr Edmondson said.

And NAPLAN co-ordinator and deputy principal Julie Wicks said the size of the school helped to focus efforts.

“We have small classes so we know the children really well and we know where the areas of struggle are,” Ms Wicks said.

The school found that reading was an area in need of improvement.

“We could see that there were certain forms of texts that the kids didn’t really perform as well when they were answering questions about it,” she said.

“We implemented some programs where students were regularly exposed to a range of text types.”

And the students have “responded very positively,” Ms Wicks said.

“We want the children to be actively engaged and find learning fun.

“We are proud of them and they’ve worked hard.”

Tatachilla Lutheran College in McLaren Vale was the second best for the region with an average score of 510.4, while Hallett Cove South Primary School was the third best with an average score of 505.2.

The top performing secondary school was IQRA College, in O’Halloran Hill, where the average result was 597.4.

Willunga Waldorf School in was the second best for the region with an average score of 587.0, while Woodcroft College in Morphett Vale was the third best with an average score of 574.8.

To determine how each school performed in 2023, the scores for all five test subjects for the student cohort (year 5 or year 9) were combined and the average found.

Special schools, schools with fewer than 20 students enrolled, and schools that did not report any results for NAPLAN subjects were excluded from the analysis.

The figures were independently compiled from the federal government’s MySchool website.