Search the list: How Australia’s biggest schools rank academically
Enrolments are surging at Australia’s biggest schools but academic results reveal how students really fare. Search the list to see if your school made the grade.
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NAPLAN results for Australia’s largest schools show that bigger isn’t always better, with a key parents’ group urging greater investment to make low-enrolment schools more attractive.
Of the top 100 largest secondary schools by enrolment last year, 25 fell below the national average in aggregate Year 9 scores, while 22 primary schools scored underneath the Year 5 average.
Victoria and Queensland fared the worst, with 12 and 11 secondary schools, respectively, scoring below average.
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With more than 3800 students Marsden State High School in Queensland is the largest to fall below the grade, followed by Victoria’s Minaret College and Manor Lakes P-12 College, both with close to 3000 enrolments.
Only five South Australia high schools ranked in the nation’s biggest 100, with two – Xavier College and Cardijn College – performing below average.
Eleven Queensland, eight Victorian and three South Australian primary schools – all up, more than one in five of the largest 100 – scored worse than average test results.
Across primary and secondary levels NSW schools outperformed the national average.
Where a school offers both primary and secondary education, enrolment figures, provided by ACARA, represent the school’s total population.
The largest 10 schools in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and SA took on an extra 2645 students combined last year.
Collectively they are responsible for just under 3 per cent of Australia’s schoolchildren, according to ACARA data.
Bacchus Marsh Grammar in Victoria, and Nazareth Catholic College, Glenunga International High and Marryatville High in SA, were among those at capacity.
The majority of schools, some spread across multiple campuses, would not comment on their enrolment caps.
An extra 515,000 children were predicted to enter the education system in the decade to 2032, a 12.8 per cent increase, according to Independent Schools Australia, with some schools making rapid investment to grow sustainably.
In Victoria, the peak body for parents welcomed a $2.5bn state public school funding package over the next 10 years, but warned that inconsistent zoning rules caused an uneven distribution of children across schools.
Parents Victoria chief executive Gail McHardy said governments needed to make lower-enrolment schools a more attractive option, through greater investment and supports.
SEARCH HOW YOUR SCHOOL RANKS FOR MATHS
The organisation has also been lobbying for government-funded family engagement officers in larger campuses, that would assist principals and teachers with day-to-day parent issues related to administration and student needs.
“When governments undertake that big-picture planning for population growth and development, there needs to be that conversation about where parents are going to send their kids to school,” she said.
“Housing density and new development is one of the biggest factors, because more housing tends to compound the issues that were already there.”
Woodcroft College in SA may not be a huge school, but its enrolments have jumped from 325 to 552 in just the past four years as demand boomed.
In response, the R-12 college, which scored above average in the 2024 years 5 and 9 NAPLAN, spent $22m building a new three-storey junior campus which opened last February, retiring its transportable classrooms.
Principal Shannon Warren said ballooning enrolments previously caused physical congestion in teaching buildings and playspaces, while making school bus pick-ups trickier.
“We built a new early learning centre in 2020, which created this pipeline of students and parents who maybe wouldn’t have previously considered Woodcroft, but wanted that continual learning from early education to high school,” Ms Warren said.
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Originally published as Search the list: How Australia’s biggest schools rank academically
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