A message from the Principal

It has been wonderful to have so many conversations with families following the release of our 2026 NAPLAN results last week.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to acknowledge the hard work of our staff and students. While we are incredibly proud of these results, we also know they are not something that has happened overnight. They represent years of thoughtful work, professional learning and a shared commitment from our staff to continually improve our teaching.

Our School Council met last night and spent some time reflecting on these results. It was a really positive discussion and an opportunity to recognise that the work we have undertaken over recent years around explicit instruction and systematic, synthetic phonics is beginning to show some genuinely impressive impact.

The timing was interesting, with the national NAPLAN results also receiving significant media attention this week. Much of the discussion centred around the finding that only around two-thirds of Australian students are currently meeting expected standards in literacy and numeracy.

Against that backdrop, we are incredibly proud that at St Kilda Park, well over 90% of our students are achieving at or above the expected standard in almost every assessed area. While there is always more work to do, these results give us confidence that we are on the right track and, most importantly, that more of our students are leaving our school with the strong literacy and numeracy foundations they need for future success.

School Council also had the opportunity to look at another set of data that is equally important to us - the results from this year's Attitudes to School Survey.

Each year, all students in Years 4 to 6 complete this anonymous statewide survey, sharing their thoughts about learning, their teachers, relationships, wellbeing and their overall experience of school. It provides us with incredibly valuable feedback because it tells us how our students actually feel about coming to school each day.

The results were just as pleasing as our NAPLAN data.

Looking back over the past four years, we can see significant improvements in the way students feel about their learning and their classroom experiences.

The percentage of students who agree that

"My teacher understands how I learn" has increased by 12%.
"My teacher makes learning fun" has risen by 11%.
Perhaps most pleasingly, 95% of our students now agree that "My teacher believes that I can do well at school" - an increase of 16% since 2022.

Students are also reporting greater confidence in themselves as learners. The number who say

"I usually pay attention in class" has increased by 14%,
"I am good at learning" has increased by 18%, and
"I can do challenging school work" has increased by 14%.

I find these results particularly heartening because they challenge one of the common misconceptions around explicit instruction. Sometimes this approach is portrayed as dry, repetitive or disengaging for students. Our own students are telling us a very different story.

More students are enjoying their learning, feeling successful, believing in their own abilities and engaging positively in the classroom than they were four years ago. Together with our NAPLAN results, this gives us confidence that our focus on high-quality teaching is making a real difference.

Beyond the classroom, the survey also paints a really positive picture of our school community. The percentage of students who say

"I feel proud about being a student at this school" has increased by 16% over the past four years.
Students reporting "I have friends at this school" has increased by 7%,
while "I feel safe at this school" has risen by 8%.

Perhaps the most pleasing results of all relate to the relationships our students have with the adults around them.

Since 2022, there has been a remarkable 21% increase in students agreeing that "There is a teacher or another adult at school who cares about me",
while the number of students who feel "I can talk to my teacher if something is worrying me" has also increased by 21%.

For me, this is some of the most important data we collect. Academic achievement certainly matters, but so too does ensuring our students feel known, supported, challenged and proud to be part of our school. These surveys give us an invaluable insight into how our students experience school each day and help us understand where we are making progress and where we can continue to improve.

We are incredibly proud of what our students are telling us. Their feedback reinforces our belief that strong teaching and strong relationships are not competing priorities - they go hand in hand. It is encouraging to see that as we continue to raise expectations and improve teaching, our students are also feeling more connected, more confident and more successful.

That is something worth celebrating.

Neil Scott

Principal