How every Victorian school performed in NAPLAN over five years
The best Victorian schools for NAPLAN scores have been revealed in a five-year analysis of data, as top campuses boost entire class performance with high-achieving role models. See how your school rates.
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The best Victorian schools have been revealed in a five-year analysis of NAPLAN data, as top campuses boost entire class performance with high-achieving role models.
Rather than segregating gifted pupils, the best public schools have seen their brightest students lift the skills of their classmates.
It comes as the Victorian, New South Wales, Queensland and ACT governments today release an interim report raising concerns with the national test and proposing a major review.
An online searchable database of Victorian schools’ long term NAPLAN results found girls campuses were the strongest performers from 2014 to 2018 in grade 5 and year 9.
Private campus Presbyterian Ladies’ College, in Burwood, was No.1 for primary school while select entry MacRobertson Girls, in Melbourne, was the state’s best high school.
With little surprise, four of the state’s select entry high schools took out the four top spots.
But some public campuses weren’t far behind.
Glen Waverley Secondary lost almost 30 students every year to select entry campuses.
But the school still smashed the NAPLAN scores of elite private campuses, raking in 38th spot of more than 500 Victorian high schools.
Principal Joanne Wastle said the school didn’t separate its pupils and instead found real benefits in students of different levels working side by side.
“We do not have a SEAL (Select Entry Accelerated Learning) program — we put all the kids in together,” she said.
“That means we have the high end role models in the class for kids who might not be as academically strong — they can see what a strong academic student looks like.”
Ms Wastle said teachers worked hard to continue challenging the top students so they learned to their capability, not simply to the curriculum.
Box Hill High, the state’s top public school with a rank of 29th, had a similar strategy.
Principal Losh Pillay said the school had high expectations of its students, no matter their level of achievement.
“One of the mantras of the school is that it’s not just about your ability, it’s about your effort and your growth,” she said.
But they don’t just challenge their students and expect them to learn from one another.
“We don’t allow ourselves to become complacent — we continue to challenge our teachers to ensure they continue to be lifelong learners,” she said.
“Our teachers then learn from other teachers and share their knowledge.”
Ms Pillay said the whole school was constantly evolving — “the work is never really done”.
Meanwhile, Victoria’s second-best performing year 5 school was St Andrews Christian College, in Wantirna South, followed by private campus Haileybury College, in Keysborough.
The year 9 school that pulled in second place was select entry Melbourne High, in South Yarra, then select entry Nossal High, in Berwick.
The best performing schools were established by combining every school’s results across five different NAPLAN subjects and calculating the yearly average score from 2014 to 2018.
Each school’s results were independently collated through the federal government’s MySchool website.
Special schools, schools with fewer than 20 students enrolled in any year and schools that did not report any results for NAPLAN subjects were excluded from the analysis.
Victoria’s 2019 NAPLAN results will be released in March.
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Australian students are slipping in the transition from primary to high school with an analysis of NAPLAN data showing schools and students were treating Grade 6 as a ‘gap year’.
It comes as the NAPLAN test is under fire for not being implemented properly, and instead forcing schools tocomplete with each other and educators to ‘teach to the test’.
The Victorian, NSW, QLD and ACT governments today released an interim report of an independent joint review of NAPLAN, stating there were major issues with the national test.
Experts also pointed to a discrepancy between NAPLAN scores and the very bleak OECD assessment, suggesting that NAPLAN needed to be reviewed.
The interim report called for further investigation into keeping school data secret to prevent comparisons, changing NAPLAN testing year levels, shifting the test to earlier in the year so results could be better used and reviewing the content of the assessment.
Victorian Education Minister James Merlino said NAPLAN needed to change.
“We need a test that has the support and engagement of the teaching workforce, parents and students and that is why we needto make significant changes,” he said.
But Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan dismissed the interim report findings.
“This interim report from a minority of states is a distraction. My focus is on implementing the Gonski reforms to improve student outcomes.”
The issue has been put to the top of the agenda of the Education Council next week between state and federal education ministers.
Grattan Institute school education program director Dr Peter Goss said national testing was needed because not every school could self-assess.
“National coverage also means that the test has enough power to pick up small changes; four weeks extra learning a year would be enough to reverse the 12-month decline we have seen in PISA (OECD’s 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment), but you can’t pick up improvements that small without a large scale standardised test,” he said.
Experts pointed to a slide in secondary school results as an example of a trend that students were being lost when they transitioned.
An exclusive study of five years of NAPLAN data indicated signs of improvement, particularly in younger years, likely downto a shift in teachers moving from inquiry based teaching to explicit learning; where students were shown what to do and how to do it rather than exploring ideas.
The analysis, by Dr Goss for the Herald Sun, revealed strong gains across all subjects in year 3 and year 5 nationally, while writing dropped off in year 9 and reading took a hit in year 7.
“About half of the gains – slightly more in numeracy, slightly less in reading – came in the last five years since 2014.
There are even signs that the improvements in years 3 and 5 – which started early in the decade – may now be flowing through tobetter year 7 and 9 results,” he said.
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“But most of the improvements we are seeing though are in year 3 and year 5 – year 7 is basically flat.”
He said pockets of improvement could be the result of explicit teaching filtering back into schools.
Director of the Gonski Institute for Education Adrian Piccoli said the Australian education system was losing students when they hit high school.
“There is something going on between primary school and high school. PISA shows us that 15-year-olds in Australia are not really taking school that seriously.
“We need to look at the way secondary school is delivered and how we transition from primary to high school because we are losing them in year 7, 8 and 9.”
VICTORIA’S TOP 10 NAPLAN SCHOOLS 2014–2018
GRADE 5
Presbyterian Ladies’ College: 2990.8
St Andrews Christian College: 2867.4
Haileybury College: 2864.4
Erasmus Primary School: 2862.6
Huntingtower School: 2854.0
Serpell Primary School: 2852.0
Camberwell Girls Grammar School: 2851.0
Beverley Hills Primary School: 2843.6
Ballarat Clarendon College: 2838.8
Fintona Girls’ School: 2832.2
YEAR 9
MacRobertson Girls High School: 3510.6
Melbourne High School: 3486.4
Nossal High School: 3355.0
Suzanne Cory High School: 3326.8
Presbyterian Ladies’ College: 3310.2
Ballarat Clarendon College: 3282.0
Fintona Girls’ School: 3240.8
Haileybury College: 3231.6
Korowa Anglican Girls’ School: 3229.0
Camberwell Grammar School: 3213.8
*Total raw NAPLAN scores from 2014 to 2018 with data complied from MySchool
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