NAPLAN results 2025: How Sydney’s top schools performed in reading, writing and arithmetic

NAPLAN scores at schools in some of Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs have tanked, with student performance falling well below the previous year’s results. See how their scores stack up.

NAPLAN scores across primary schools in Sydney’s wealthiest areas have tanked.

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NAPLAN scores at primary schools in some of Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs have tanked in the 2025 exams, with student performance falling well below the previous year’s results in reading, spelling and numeracy.

The Daily Telegraph has compared the average scores of Year 5 and Year 9 students at the top primary and secondary schools statewide, and found some schools have recorded results almost 40 points lower than in 2024.

Year 5 scores at Woollahra Public School in Sydney’s eastern suburbs fell almost 34 points on average, with numeracy the school’s worst affected area, declining 42 points since last year.

Top-ranked Darlinghurst selective school Sydney Grammar, which will next year charge annual tuition fees of up to $52,000, saw Year 5 results slump from an average score of 641, to 625.

Balmain Public School in the inner west, and Artarmon Public School and Pymble Ladies’ College on the north shore each recorded double-digit declines in writing and spelling.

Further afield, Hornsby North Public School and Dural Public School also experienced a very marginal decrease in performance of between six and seven points on average across the five testing domains.

Bucking the trend were junior students in three of the state’s best-performing private schools: all-girls school Abbotsleigh in Wahroonga, Islamic school Al-Faisal College’s Campbelltown campus, and boys’ school St Aloysius’ College in Kirribilli.

Year 5 students at wealthy private girls’ school Abbotsleigh on Sydney's north shore performed better than last year’s cohort. Picture: Australian Institute of Architects

Year 5 students at all three schools recorded an average score 13 points greater than the 2024 cohort, driven largely by higher scores in the grammar and punctuation tests.

The state’s top secondary schools – all of them academically selective, and all but one of them government-run – performed far better overall, with some Year 9 cohorts performing substantially better than their peers in the grade above.

James Ruse Agricultural High School jumped almost 20 points on average, owing in large part to a massive 50-point boost in mathematics.

Year 9 students at Ruse achieved an average score of 835 this year in the numeracy test, up from 785 – outstripping the next nearest cohort, Sydney Boys High School, by 40 marks.

James Ruse Agricultural High School is a selective academic public school.

Only one high school among the top 15 – the Conservatorium High School in Sydney’s CBD – recorded a significant decline in Year 9 results year-on-year, falling almost 40 points from an average score of 710 in 2024 to 672 in 2025.

It comes as the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) releases results for all NSW schools, which The Daily Telegraph will cover in full detail in Thursday’s edition.

In tandem with its latest NAPLAN release ACARA has also revealed a list of “schools making a difference” – a selection of schools from across Sydney and NSW in which students have made the greatest progress over the last three years with respect to their socio-economic status.

Top performers Matthew Pearce Public School, Beecroft Public School and Knox Grammar School appear on the list, as well as outer-suburban schools like St Johns Park Public School and St Felix Catholic Primary School in Bankstown.

The 2025 NAPLAN release has allowed schools, teachers and education experts to accurately track student progress for the first time since 2021, following the cancellation of the exams in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic and a “reset” in 2023.

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Originally published as NAPLAN results 2025: How Sydney’s top schools performed in reading, writing and arithmetic