Gold Coast NAPLAN 2018: Public schools are catching up to private schools.

HOW do Gold Coast public schools compare to private when it comes to NAPLAN results? The results might be closer than you think.

GOLD COAST private schools are outmatching their public counterparts in close to every subject when it comes to NAPLAN, but public school results are improving faster.

Data released by the Queensland Curriculum Assessment Authority this week reveal the city’s private and independent schools have consistently beaten public schools in reading, writing, grammar and numeracy on the national test.

GOLD COAST’S TOP NAPLAN SCHOOLS REVEALED

Assisi Catholic College students, Ethan Naimo, 10, Principal Michael Laidler and April McFaul, 8. Picture: Jerad Williams

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This year, however, the Gold Coast’s Year 9 public high school students are more likely to have yielded a better result in spelling, with an average result 1.9 per cent higher than those in private education.

Overall, Gold Coast private primary schools produced an average result on their NAPLAN test that was 5.7 per cent higher than those in public education.

In high school, those outside of the Government system were on average 2.4 per cent better.

HOW ARE GOLD COAST SCHOOLS IMPROVING?

The city’s primary schools have improved in most areas, while those in a private high school have stagnated.

Assisi Catholic College students, Ethan Naimo, 10, April McFaul, 8, and Mariusz Hall, 9. Picture: Jerad Williams

A 2015-2018 comparison of NAPLAN results showed the results of Gold Coast public primary school students increased in all areas except writing.

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Year 3 and 5 students in the public system had an overall improvement of up to 5.7 per cent in the reading category, far outstripping that of their private rivals.

Private primary schools recorded subtle improvements in all subjects, bar writing.

Assisi Catholic College at Upper Coomera produced one of the largest improvements among the city’s private schools with a 2.08 per cent overall increase between 2015 and this year.

The school’s high school grades also improved over the same period.

Principal Michael Laidler put the improvement down to a common language across classrooms and year level.

“What we have found to be really beneficial is having a common language that is used by teachers throughout the school,” he said.

“At Assisi we have short-term planning cycles, where our teachers get together once every three-five weeks and look at improvement instead of every term.

“We find we can keep in step with how the kids are learning and cater to them,” he said.