The best value Brisbane private schools based on this year’s NAPLAN results

Citipointe Christian College, a co-ed school in Carindale, is arguably Brisbane’s best-value private school.

Students at the school achieved the highest average scores in five areas – year 7 reading, spelling, grammar, and numeracy and year 9 numeracy – out of Brisbane’s 25 least expensive private schools, NAPLAN results show.

The other standouts among schools with annual fees less than $15,000 were either co-ed or girls’ schools – with no boys’ schools among the top performers.

Citipointe Christian College achieved great NAPLAN results in 2024.Credit: Citipointe Christian College

ACARA gave media outlets early access to 2024 NAPLAN results, with journalists allowed to search a limited number of schools.

This masthead compared the year 7 and year 9 results of 25 Brisbane private schools with year 12 fees under $15,000, including tuition fees and other compulsory charges.

In year 7 spelling, grammar and numeracy, Citipointe students achieved above average, when compared with Australian students with a similar background.

That background is relatively privileged: according to the school’s ICSEA (Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage) percentile, listed alongside NAPLAN data on the My School website, students at Citipointe are more educationally advantaged than 96 per cent of schools in Australia.

The prep-to-year-12 southside school has more than 1600 students, and is affiliated with the Pentecostal church of the same name. Describing itself as “uncompromisingly Christian”, it charged total fees of $14,640 this year.

Citipointe made national headlines two years ago after issuing a controversial enrolment contract that said homosexuality was “sinful”, but reached a settlement with parents this year and issued a statement of regret.

Another high-performing school was Mt St Michael’s College, a Catholic all-girls school in Ashgrove that charged more than $12,800.

It received the top results in year 9 reading and writing of the schools on our list, outperforming other Australian schools with a similar background.

Other top performers were two Catholic all-girls schools, with St Rita’s College at Clayfield scoring the best for year 7 writing and Lourdes Hill College at Hawthorne for year 9 grammar.

Northside Christian College, an independent co-ed school at Everton Park, achieved top marks for year 9 spelling.

Brisbane’s least expensive school, the co-ed Australian International Islamic College, with fees of $3332 this year, had an ICSEA percentile of 29.

Its students outperformed those with a similar background in year 7 reading, writing, spelling, and grammar, and year 9 reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy.

The Catholic co-ed St Thomas More College in Sunnybank, with fees of $5644, achieved higher results in year 9 writing, spelling and grammar than schools of a similar background.

St John Fisher College, an all-girls Catholic school at Bracken Ridge charging $7125, achieved above-average results for year 7 and 9 writing and grammar.

NAPLAN has been criticised for stressing out students, “teaching to the test”, and only providing a measure of the academic performance of one year’s cohort.

Queensland has the highest rate of parents withdrawing children from the test. It also recorded the poorest NAPLAN scores of any mainland state for the second year in a row this year.