Mid-North Coast’s best performing schools for NAPLAN 2022

Top performing NAPLAN schools have been revealed for the Mid North Coast. Check out our interactive tool to see how your school ranked.

Janine Watson

@JanineEWatson

3 min read

February 22, 2023 - 1:00AM

The Mid-North Coast News

Stephanie Cairns is the co-ordinator of literacy and numeracy from K-12 at St Columba Anglican School.

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St Columba Anglican School and North East Public School of Distance Education are Mid North Coast’s top performing NAPLAN schools.

An independent analysis of newly-released 2022 NAPLAN results has revealed the schools which performed the best in the Year 5 and Year 9 tests.

North East Public School of Distance Education, in Port Macquarie, had better primary results than any other school in Mid North Coast, scoring an average of 548.8 across the five test subjects.

St Columba Anglican School in Port Macquarie was the second best for the region with an average score of 525.0, while Telegraph Point Public School in Telegraph Point was the third best with an average score of 519.4.

The top performing secondary school was St Columba Anglican School, in Port Macquarie, with the average result was 607.2.

MacKillop College Port Macquarie in Port Macquarie was the second best for the region with an average score of 584.2, while Nambucca Valley Christian Community School in Nambucca Heads was the third best with an average score of 584.2.

To determine how each school performed in 2022, the scores for all five test subjects for the student cohort (Yr 5 or Yr 9) were combined and the average found.

Nambucca Valley Christian Community School was the third best performing secondary school with an average score of 584.2 in the 2022 NAPLAN results.

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.

Specialist co-ordinator appointed

St Columba Anglican School principal Terry Muldoon said that some years ago – using educational data, including NAPLAN – staff identified there were some inconsistencies in the teaching of the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy at St Columba.

“Having identified this issue, we employed a specialist Literacy and Numeracy Coordinator. The Co-ordinator also took on the complementary role of Educational Data Manager,” Mr Muldoon said.

“The work of the co-ordinator, supported by school leadership and using targeted professional development, has resulted in the school’s improved capacity to identify students who need extra help, created structures and processes to deliver support and ensured that the educational strategies used in our teaching and learning are ones that work and really make a difference.”

School destroyed by flood

Relieving principal at Telegraph Point Public School Anna Hoelzl is extremely proud of the recent results.

“In regular circumstances, our 2022 NAPLAN results would be impressive: a small, regional school outperforming statistically similar schools and even state averages in many areas,” Ms Hoelzl said.

“After our school was destroyed by flood in 2021 these results are even more extraordinary.

“For our students to achieve at such a high level, and to demonstrate sustained academic growth over a period of time which has included so much disruption, is a testament to the hard work, dedication and resilience of our entire community.”

Year three students Mack Chaffey, Zoe Clissold and Lucy Carstairs at Telegraph Public School where every staff member knows every student by name.

She says that while Covid and the flood disrupted their normal operations, they used this time to really focus on their core business of learning in the classroom.

“Variations of routine certainly provide fun and beneficial school experiences, but the silver lining of these restrictions and disruptions was uninterrupted learning, which has yielded excellent results for our students.”

Telegraph Public is a small school with a small staff who serve 125 students.

“Every staff member knows every student by name, and usually their family too.

“The relationships that we can build and foster are unique and very special. We enjoy great support from the families within our community and work in partnership to achieve the best outcomes for our students.”