Parents across Australia are logging on to My School as fresh NAPLAN 2025 data lands, revealing the campuses quietly outperforming their peers – and raising familiar questions about league tables, advantage and what a “good school” really looks like.
For more than a million students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9, the NAPLAN 2025 tests are already a distant memory. For their parents, the stress is only just beginning. New data released by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has gone live on the My School website, allowing families to see how almost 10,000 schools performed this year.
The release doesn’t just list raw scores. It shows how much progress students have made over two years, how each school compares with campuses serving similar communities, and how attendance has recovered since the pandemic. National figures remain stubborn: roughly one in three students still falls short of the “strong” proficiency bands in literacy and numeracy. Yet tucked inside the spreadsheets are schools that are doing something remarkable.
Data drop day: what’s new in NAPLAN 2025
Since 2023, NAPLAN has operated on a reset measurement scale. That means results before 2022 can no longer be lined up against today’s scores in a simple chart. Instead, ACARA is encouraging parents and policymakers to look at growth: how much students improve between tests rather than where they sit on a single day.
This year’s release restores student progress information, which had been missing during the transition to the new standards. For the first time in several years, parents can see whether their child – and their school – is moving ahead faster or slower than similar students elsewhere.
Alongside the learning data, ACARA has published updated funding and attendance figures. Attendance crept up to about 88.8% in 2025, slightly better than 2024 but still below pre-pandemic levels, reminding governments that every conversation about results is also a conversation about whether students are actually in class.
High-achieving schools that defy expectations
Both ACARA and independent analysis highlight a cluster of “high-achieving” or “making a difference” schools in every state and territory. These are campuses where student progress significantly outstrips that of schools with similar starting scores and socioeconomic profiles.
In New South Wales, Carlingford West public school has drawn national attention. It is one of the state’s largest primary schools, educating more than 1,600 students from foundation to year 6. About 96% of its students speak a language other than English at home, representing more than 40 languages. Far from being a barrier, teachers say this diversity is central to the school’s strength.
The school has scored in the top band across years 3 and 5 in every NAPLAN domain in 2025. Behind the results sits a tightly organised team structure. Each grade has an assistant principal who helps design learning programs, while a large cohort of English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) teachers works alongside classroom staff. New arrivals receive intensive language support and are paired with buddies who help them navigate both English and school life.
Attendance at Carlingford West sits around 94%, well above the national average. Staff talk about relationship-building as seriously as they talk about lesson planning: students are expected to aim high, but in a culture that focuses on encouragement rather than pressure.
On Melbourne’s south-eastern fringe, Springvale Rise primary school offers a different version of the same story. Many families have refugee or migrant backgrounds and most are in the lower quartiles of socioeconomic advantage, yet the school has been recognised for the above-average progress its students make in reading, writing and numeracy between years 3 and 5.
Chatswood public school on Sydney’s north shore, where families tend to have higher levels of formal education, has also been singled out for out-performing similar schools. Although the demographics differ, the common threads are clear: explicit teaching, careful use of data and an almost obsessive focus on what is happening in each classroom.
Inside the “secret sauce”: explicit teaching and relentless data
Across these standout schools, staff describe their approach in similar terms. Lessons are broken into short, clearly modelled steps rather than broad, open-ended tasks. Teachers routinely check for understanding, revisit key concepts and plan future lessons based on where students are still struggling.
At both Springvale Rise and Chatswood, leadership teams have spent years embedding consistent explicit-instruction practices across every year level. Rather than leaving individual teachers to improvise, they set out success criteria for each lesson, so students know exactly what they are learning and why.
Education analysts argue that this approach is not a fashionable quick fix but a method supported by decades of research. It appears again and again in schools that achieve rapid and sustained lifts in their results, especially for students who start behind their peers.
Why parents are being warned about raw NAPLAN rankings
With so much new data available, league tables are inevitable. But ACARA’s leadership is again urging parents to be cautious about media lists that simply stack schools from “top” to “bottom” based on raw scores.
Schools with the very highest scores often enrol children from households with strong educational backgrounds, stable income and extensive tutoring. Those advantages travel with students, no matter which campus they attend. Highlighting only the raw figures risks confusing privilege with performance and overlooks lower-scoring schools that may be lifting students far more than the numbers suggest at first glance.
Instead, ACARA points families towards the “similar schools” comparison on My School. This feature shows how a school is doing against others serving communities with comparable levels of advantage, giving a clearer picture of whether teaching and support are truly adding value.
Independent analysis also continues to underline the achievement gaps between rich and poor, between city and regional Australia, and between students with and without additional learning needs. Even when individual schools buck the trend, the national picture remains one of uneven opportunity.
How to check your school’s NAPLAN 2025 results on My School
If you are trying to make sense of the 2025 release, it helps to move step by step rather than scrolling through raw scores.
- Go to the official My School website.
- Use the search bar to type your child’s school name, then select the correct campus from the list.
- Open the NAPLAN section to see results in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy for each tested year level.
- Toggle to the “Student progress” view to see how much improvement students made between tests.
- Click on the “Similar schools” comparison to see whether your school is performing above, at or below the level of schools with comparable student backgrounds.
- Look at attendance and funding data alongside test scores to understand the broader context.
For a deeper media explainer on what this year’s list of “schools making a difference” looks like and how explicit teaching is being used, ABC News has a detailed report on the 2025 NAPLAN school results and the success stories behind them. You can read it via the ABC’s education coverage.
What parents should really focus on
Experts stress that NAPLAN is one snapshot, not a full portrait of a child or a school. A single set of scores cannot measure whether students feel safe, whether they are being stretched in the subjects they love, whether they have access to music, sport and cultural activities or whether they feel a sense of belonging in the playground.
Parents are encouraged to treat the 2025 results as a starting point for conversations, not the final word. That might mean talking with classroom teachers about specific strengths and weaknesses, asking how the school supports children who are falling behind, or visiting open days to see how calm and purposeful the classrooms feel.
Some families will still be tempted to chase the schools at the very top of the national tables. But the data suggests that what matters most for long-term outcomes is not the postcode on a league table, but whether a school is helping its students move forward faster than you would expect, given the challenges they face.
Beyond the scores: opportunity, equity and the next debate
As governments prepare the next round of funding agreements, this year’s NAPLAN release will feed into a broader argument about equity. The progress of schools like Carlingford West, Springvale Rise and Chatswood shows what is possible when expert teaching, stable leadership and community support line up. The stubborn gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students show how far the system still has to go.
For families clicking through the My School pages tonight, the message is simple but demanding. The new data makes it easier to see which schools are quietly transforming the life chances of their students. Turning those examples into the norm will require more than test scores – it will require policy that takes attendance, teaching quality and community support as seriously as the numbers on the NAPLAN chart.
Also read: For a very different kind of high-pressure performance, Swikblog recently covered the drama of the North London derby and its viral online reaction, another reminder of how data and emotion collide in modern life.
