The 2022 NAPLAN results have been released, with several news reports revealing the top performing schools across Australia.
Among the NSW schools with high-achieving results are Tara Anglican School, Hurstville Public School, John the Baptist Catholic Primary School, and Cabramatta High School.
Speaking with the Sydney Morning Herald, Cabramatta High principal Lachlan Erskine attributed the school's NAPLAN results to weekly literacy lessons, which are compulsory for years 7 to 10.
“These are explicit literacy lessons where teachers help students with language, complex sentences, extending vocabulary and teaching persuasive and imaginative text types,” Erskine told the newspaper.
A forensic examination of student results to identify weaknesses was key to lifting the co-ed school’s literacy results, according to Erksine, which are above or well above average in writing, spelling, and grammar for years 7 and 9.
Cabramatta High students also had above-average numeracy results in year 7 and 9, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“Maths masterclasses were set up for students to concentrate on specific concepts, such as measurement or fractions, and to provide catch-up instruction if they had fallen behind,” Erskine said.
In Victoria, The Age revealed that 16 of the state’s top 20 performers are government schools, while the remaining four are independent or Catholic schools. Among these schools are Dandenong North Primary, Beverley Hills Primary School, Presbyterian Ladies’ College, and Braybrook College.
Victoria’s top performers also include schools that have a high proportion of students from first-generation migrant families, with between 60% and 90% of students from non-English-speaking backgrounds in every school in the top 10.
A separate report from news.com.au compared results that indicated boys’ schools lagging behind girls’ schools, as 28 of the schools in the top 100 are all-girls schools, while only 12 are boys’ schools.
Several regional public schools with a smaller number of students were also at the top of South Australia’s NAPLAN results, including Wudinna Area School and Owen Primary School.
Commenting the release of NAPLAN scores, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said there a “lot of positives” for state’s results, but also emphasised the need for a “stronger focus” on improving educational outcomes in regional areas.
“There’s no doubt that we need to have a stronger focus in regional NSW,” Perrottet told the press on Wednesday. “All schools are different, and all schools have different challenges they face but the importance of these results is … if you don’t see the impacts, then you can’t make the requisite changes.”
Earlier this week, Education Minister Jason Clare announced the government’s plans to enact major reforms to address educational inequality.
“Today if you're a child from a poor family, you're less likely to go to preschool, you're more likely to fall behind, you're less likely to finish high school and you're less likely to finish university,” Clare said at a press conference Monday. “This is an opportunity to change that.”