Principal's Report

Strong Year 9 NAPLAN Growth at Woodmans Hill Secondary College

Our 2026 Year 9 NAPLAN results provide encouraging evidence of the progress being made by students at Woodmans Hill Secondary College. 

While proficiency data shows where students are performing at a particular point in time, growth is the most important measure for evaluating our impact. It considers where students began and how much progress they have made between Years 7 and 9. Strong growth provides the clearest indication that our teaching practices and learning supports are having a positive impact on student learning. 

Our Year 9 growth results were particularly positive: 

• Reading: 78% of students achieved medium or high growth—four percentage points above the state. 

• Numeracy: 77% achieved medium or high growth—three percentage points above the state. 

• Writing: 73% achieved medium or high growth—equal to the state. 

• Spelling: 78% achieved medium or high growth—four percentage points above the state. 

• Grammar and Punctuation: 78% achieved medium or high growth—five percentage points above the state. 

In four of the five assessment areas, Woodmans Hill students achieved stronger growth than the Victorian result, with Writing equal to the state. The data also indicates that our students are making stronger progress than students with similar starting points in comparable schools. 

These results provide evidence that our focus on explicit teaching, modelling, scaffolding, supported application and collaborative improvement through Professional Learning Communities is contributing to positive student progress. 

The data also gives us a clear direction for our next stage of improvement. We will continue strengthening explicit teaching and gradual release across all classrooms, while sharpening our attention on writing, junior school literacy intervention and increasing the proportion of students achieving high growth in numeracy. 

NAPLAN represents one important source of information about student learning. Alongside classroom assessment and teacher judgement, it helps us recognise effective practice and identify the areas requiring further attention. 

We congratulate our Year 9 students on their effort and progress and acknowledge the sustained commitment of our teachers, education support staff and families. These results reflect our collective determination to improve learning and ensure every student is supported to grow