Westside dominates top schools list: how they performed

Brisbane’s inner west has once again showed why it is by far the best area in the state for school achievement, and one of the best in Australia.

Ashgrove State School Year 6 students Sebastian Cumplido-Richards, Luke Jacobsen, David Plater, and Ethan White, winners of the Australian open World Educational Robot competition. Ashgrove SS scored a perfect 100 in the Better Education list, once again. Picture: Liam Kidston

Westside primary schools have once again overwhelmingly dominated the state’s top NAPLAN performers for 2019, with exactly half of the 16 schools to achieve a perfect 100 in the area.

Ashgrove State School, Indooroopilly State School, Rainworth State School, St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School, Brisbane Boys’ College, St Peters Lutheran College Indooroopilly, Fig Tree Pocket State School and Ironside State School all scored a 100 according to the Better Education website.

St Aidan’s, Ashgrove, Indooroopilly, Rainworth and Ironside all retained their ranking of 100 they achieved the previous year.

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Lewis, Annabelle, Sianna and Tess from Rainworth State School, which once again has scored a perfect 100 in the Better Education list. Picture: Steve Pohlner

And another 10 westside schools achieved a 99, or one-third of all schools to reach that benchmark.

Seven received a 98, out of a total of 26 schools, four achieved a 97, two achieved a 96, there was one 95 school and three 94s.

St Aidan’s was the only secondary school in the westside to score a perfect 100, however.

St Peters, Mt St Michael’s College at Ashgrove and BBC all received a 99, while Indooroopilly and The Gap state highs both scored a highly creditable 98.

Kelvin Grove State College, Brigidine college (Indooroopilly) and Marist College Ashgrove scored a 97 and Kenmore State high a 96.

Ambrose Treacy College (Indooroopilly) made it to 95.

FULL LIST OF QUEENSLAND’S BEST PRIMARY SCHOOLS

FULL LIST OF QUEENSLAND’S BEST SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Iris Peters, Ashley Edwards and Jess Hulme, all 16, from St Aidan's Anglican Girls School. It is the only westside secondary school to score a perfect 100. Picture: AAP/Claudia Baxter

The Better Education website list compared 202 schools NAPLAN scores in 2019 to provide information on the best schools and how they compared around the state.

Exclusive analysis by The Courier-Mail last year revealed Queensland performance declined in more than half of all NAPLAN categories and scored lower than the national average in every year level and in every subject.

While writing scores improved across the board since 2018, results in Year 5,7 and 9 were still lower than the subject’s 2011 base year.

Even the worst-ranked schools, Highland Reserve State School, Eatons Hill State School and Springfield Central State School received a ranking of 90.

However, a Department of Education spokesman slammed the reliability of the list.

“The department does not support the creation of simplistic league tables based on a narrow

measure of academic performance.

“These measures without context often do not summarise the diversity of education that schools provide.”

Instead, the spokesman pointed parents to resources including the “Choosing a School” page on the Education Queensland website, or the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority’s My School website.