Of particular interest to reporters is the 50 schools in each state that ACARA has identified as “making a difference” for above-average scores compared to students with similar demographics.

In an article published early this morning under the headline ‘New data reveals Australia’s high-achieving Naplan schools for this year’, The Guardian Australia shares the success of one such school, Carlingford West Public School in NSW, where some 96 per cent of students speak a language other than English. Despite this, the school scored in the top band across Years 3 and 5 in all domains in 2025, the masthead notes. 

Meanwhile, ABC News’ coverage, titled ‘The secret sauce powering the schools punching above their weight in NAPLAN’, hones in on Springvale Rise Primary School in south-east Melbourne, a school it reports is “low on privilege but high on achievement”.

Also in Victoria, the Herald Sun has analysed the Year 5 and 9 NAPLAN results of more than 1800 schools to find the state’s best performers.

The article focuses first on Melbourne’s four selective-entry high schools which it reports have maintained their position as the state’s best.

“[The data] ... revealed all-boys government school Melbourne High has outdone itself, with an average Year 9 NAPLAN score of 717.8 – a 12.6 point improvement from 2024,” it adds.

“The state’s three other selective-entry schools MacRobertson Girls High School (706.6), Nossal High (702.8) and Suzanne Cory High (696.4) rounded out the top four – all achieving average marks above 696.”

Ballarat Clarendon College, in regional western Victoria, is ranked as the top private secondary school in the state with an average NAPLAN score of 669.4, and also the top school at the primary level (590.2).

SA-based daily The Advertiser followed this data-specific angle with its article ‘Ranked: How every SA primary and secondary school performed in the 2025 NAPLAN results’, while The Illawarra Mercury went with a piece headlined ‘The Illawarra schools that have outperformed expectations…’

Explicit instruction in classrooms, structured literacy and learning cultures that set high expectations are commonly flagged as ingredients in the ‘secret sauce’ fuelling certain schools’ success.

The media have long come under fire for driving unhelpful NAPLAN league tables, which some experts have argued breeds damaging competition between schools and uses the data in a way that was never intended.  

“League tables will keep appearing because they make good headlines and spark debate,” two academics recently argued in an article for The Conversation. 

“But they should not be the guide for choosing schools.”

One research paper from 2018, which touches on deficit discourses in education, notes that when media report on educational attainment in high poverty contexts, “schools that are successful become ‘heroic exceptions’.

“The results are often discussed as unlikely to be repeated, as such, schools in high poverty areas who produce improved outcomes or high results are seen as ‘punching above their weight’,” the paper continues. 

ACARA CEO Stephen Gniel said the full range of data on My School helps school leaders, teachers and parents “understand the full value and quality of a school”.

“This includes NAPLAN results within the broader context in which each school operates, such as its socio-educational advantage,” he said.

This year’s update includes new data on cohort-specific student progress, showing how much the same students at a given school have improved since their previous NAPLAN assessment in 2023, as well as information on annual funding and school attendance.

Gniel said the student progress data “provides the information to celebrate improvement in a fairer way that considers the individual circumstances of a school, as well as to better identify areas for renewed or continued focus”.

“With detailed information on every school in the country, ACARA’s My School is the only website that publishes nationally consistent, school-level data that all Australians can see for free,” Gniel added.

Both My School data and the latest National Report on Schooling data portal update, which was also released today, show an uptick in student attendance during Semester 1 for this year.

Overall, the national attendance rate sat at 88.8 per cent (up slightly from 88.3 per cent) and the national attendance level – the proportion of students in Years 1-10 whose attendance rate is equal to or greater than 90 per cent – was 62.1 per cent (up from 59.4 per cent).

Gniel said while it was encouraging to see attendance heading in the right direction, this area remains in need of “continued focus and prioritisation”.