By Noel Towell and Caroline Schelle
Dozens of Victorian government schools matched or exceeded the performance of their high-fee private rivals in this year’s NAPLAN results.
The state’s selective-entry secondary schools – Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School, Nossal High, Melbourne High and Suzanne Cory High – are well-known for high academic results when compared with the top private schools, which can charge up to $50,000 a year.
Viewbank College principal Sharon Grimes and students are pleased with the school’s high scores in this year’s NAPLAN.Credit: Joe Armao
But this year’s NAPLAN results have highlighted the ability of lesser-known government schools to compete with their better-resourced private rivals, even as the state education sector battles a teacher shortage and a funding crisis.
The Age’s interactive guide shows the public schools that have performed strongly this year compared to private institutions. Schools are listed in alphabetical order and not ranked in order of achievement. The scores reflect raw test results and are not weighted for schools’ socioeconomic status.
The analysis compared aggregate test scores from government schools in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy against those of some prestigious independent institutions.
At Viewbank College in Melbourne’s north-east, principal Sharon Grimes said it was very rewarding to see her students thriving, with the year 9s achieving an aggregate score of 2971, competitive with many high-fee schools.
Overall, Viewbank’s year 7s and 9s performed well above average in all areas nationwide.
Grimes said the college’s strong academic record made it a “school of choice” in the area, and that families who chose not to send their children to Viewbank were mostly choosing private alternatives.
“If we don’t get enrolments from our local area students who we would expect to come to us, it’s a conversation about private options rather than anything else,” she said.
Grimes said she and her colleagues were “very purposeful” about pursuing academic outcomes for their students that would compare well with any school.
“One of the things that state schools probably grapple with is making sure that we are providing a program that engages kids,” she said.
“That’s how we continue to build relevance in their learning and set those high expectations so that they’re raising the bar themselves.
“We do an awful lot of work on people being able to understand where they sit in their learning.”
The NAPLAN test, taken in March by all students in years 3, 5,7 and 9, assesses students’ reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy.
At Kew East Primary, principal Matt O’Hern said his school’s great results were reflective of teachers who were “in education to see kids perform at a really high level”.
The school, which has 360 students, recorded well above or above average scores in several NAPLAN categories.
O’Hern explained that part of the school’s success was due to routines established in the students’ foundational years, where they spent time learning about how a classroom works socially as well as academically.
He said students also aren’t limited by their year level. If a teacher believes a student has the potential to do high-school-level maths or English, they are encouraged to try.
“To do that, we really need to know the student and … that’s a real philosophy we have here, to know their capacity to work at a really high level,” O’Hern said.
“Just because someone is in grade 6, it doesn’t mean they can’t be exposed to [a higher year] curriculum.”
Following Wednesday’s release of the NAPLAN data, Monash University education expert Dr Venesser Fernandes called for the data to be used to improve education outcomes rather than for ranking schools.
“We must shift the focus from a ‘league of tables’ deficit narrative to using this data … for place-based improvement strategies that look at the needs of a cohort of students and provide the infrastructure to support them, their schools and their community through active, local-level improvement processes,” the senior lecturer said.
NAPLAN data weighted for a school’s socioeconomic status is available at the MySchool website.
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