NAPLAN results reveal the Northern Rivers’ top performing schools in 2024

Private schools have dominated the 2024 NAPLAN results for the top performing schools in the Northern Rivers. See how your school performed.

Catherine Piltz

3 min read

December 5, 2024 - 11:00AM

Summerland Christian College and St John’s Primary School are Northern Rivers’ top performing NAPLAN schools in 2024.

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Summerland Christian College and St John’s Primary School are Northern Rivers’ top performing NAPLAN schools in 2024.

Principal Nate Atkinson said the school is “extremely encouraged” this year’s results have shown the school achieved well above the Australian average in most categories.

“While NAPLAN data itself isn’t a full measure of student success or growth, it has affirmed the significant effort the College has continued to invest into providing a solid base of literacy and numeracy for our students,” Mr Atkinson said.

“As Summerland Christian College takes its next growth steps, it has its eyes firmly on a future focused, hope-filled education.

“One that builds the key learning and character dispositions they know students will need for both academic and life success, well beyond the solid base of literacy and numeracy skills.”

Principal Nate Atkinson with students from Summerland Christian College, Goonellabah. Picture: Supplied

An independent analysis of newly released 2024 NAPLAN results has revealed the schools which performed the best in the Year 5 and Year 9 tests.

St John’s Primary School, in Mullumbimby, had the best primary results of any school in the Northern Rivers, scoring an average of 532.8.

Richmond Christian College in Ballina was the second best for the region with an average score of 527.8, while The Pocket Public School in The Pocket was the third best with an average score of 517.6.

Main Arm Upper Public School gardening and maths. Picture: supplied

Main Arm Upper public school principal Virginia Pavlovich said the school has a “strong culture” of learning.

“We have a focus on consistent classroom routines, which benefits all our students,” Ms Pavlovich said.

“Our teachers collect a lot of data which we monitor closely, and where we see a gap, we look to lift performance.

“Some of the ways we do this is using explicit instruction to clearly show students what to do, and review what we have learned each day.” She said the school “assess for” rather than “of”, learning.

“And we’ve got a lot of love. We are all in this together and we are meant to grow.”

Students reading time at Ocean Shores Public School. Picture: Supplied

Cindy Sadler, Principal Ocean Shores Public School said they are “thrilled” with their student’s achievements and results.

“Our results in Year 3 and Year 5 show that our students are performing above state and statistically similar schools in reading, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy,” Ms Sadler said.

“The hard work of our staff focusing on explicit teaching and ongoing data analysis has ensured that every single student is being supported at their level to achieve their personal best.

“At our school, we focus on the whole child and provide opportunities for creativity through music, dance and drama as well as environmental and wellbeing programs, integrating literacy and numeracy as much as possible.”

Ms Sadler said this makes for a “fun filled and supportive school environment” that our parent community values highly.

“It’s such a wonderful team effort that has led to these fantastic results,” Ms Sadler said.

The top performing secondary school was Summerland Christian College, in Goonellabah, where the average result was 602.4.

Richmond Christian College in Ballina was the second best for the region with an average score of 591.2, while Emmanuel Anglican College in Ballina was the third best with an average score of 589.0.

To determine how each school performed in 2024, the scores for all five test subjects for the student cohort (Yr 5 or Yr 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.