Victorian NAPLAN 2025: Celebrating Success While Contextualising the Data

Highlights from the ACARA Data and Victorian Performance

The release of the 2025 NAPLAN results brings encouraging news: across the nation, more than two-thirds of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 achieved "Strong" or "Exceeding" levels in reading, writing, and numeracy, with participation rates reaching their highest point since 2017.
Here in Victoria, students achieved our best results to date, ranking first or second in 18 of the 20 tested domains.
Gains in numeracy and reading across Years 5, 7 and 9 mark the first across-the-board improvements in these areas since 2017, an achievement to be proud of.

The Broader Narrative: What the Numbers Don’t Show

Each year, NAPLAN offers one window into student learning. The results give us a useful snapshot of how students are developing core literacy and numeracy skills over time. But we also know, as educators, parents, and members of a wider community, that these numbers tell only part of the story.

In the media, NAPLAN often becomes shorthand for whether students, schools or even whole systems are “successful.” But this kind of narrow framing risks overshadowing the broader purpose of schooling: to help young people become curious, capable learners who can think critically, work compassionately with others, and contribute positively to their communities.

At our school, we hold fast to the belief that real learning is about growth, not just grades, and that education is most powerful when it nourishes both the intellect and the heart.

1. Focusing on Strengths

This year, Victoria’s results are a testament to the commitment of educators, families, and students across the state.

The improvements in numeracy across middle and senior years are particularly affirming, especially in light of the many disruptions to learning that students have faced in recent years. These results reflect not only academic effort but the kind of resilience and collaborative spirit that often goes unseen in testing data. At Heathmont, our results reflect this overall improvement in the Numeracy data, particularly at the Year 9 level.

We celebrate these outcomes as a school community, not because they define us, but because they reflect what is possible when we come together with a shared purpose.

2. Understanding the Limits of Standardised Testing

NAPLAN data gives us helpful information, but it doesn’t capture everything that matters.

It doesn’t show the spark of curiosity a student feels when they make a discovery. It can’t measure the courage it takes to ask a question, the empathy students show in peer discussions, or the quiet confidence that comes from persevering with something difficult.

When we reduce education to test scores alone, we risk losing sight of the bigger picture. That’s why we continue to value a broader, more human approach to learning—one that sees every student as more than a number, and every moment of growth as worth celebrating.

In the Attitudes to School survey data from students this year, we see growth on all measures including the main ones of Sense of Belonging and Connectedness, Management of Bullying, Emotional Awareness and Regulation, Stimulated learning and Student Voice and Agency. We value this continued growth in these measures from our students.

3. Equity in Focus

The national data also reminds us of the work still to be done. Students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, those in rural and remote communities, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students continue to face systemic barriers to educational success.

The story behind these results is, in part, a story about equity—about which students have consistent access to the support, resources, and opportunities they need to thrive.

This is where compassion must guide our response. If we are to be a truly fair education system, we must keep equity at the heart of our conversations about performance. Data can help us see patterns, but it is empathy and shared responsibility that will help us respond.

One encouraging pattern in our data is that the achievement gaps we typically see between student groups at the state level are not evident in our school’s results. We do not see, for example, the gap between girls and boys in either Numeracy or Literacy and the gap between our equity funded and non-equity funded students is, likewise, negligible when compared to the statewide data. This really is something to celebrate and demonstrates our school’s commitment to ensuring that every student is supported to thrive and succeed in ways that have meaning for them.

4. Performativity and the Pressure to Measure

In recent years, we’ve seen the introduction of more and more standardised checks in the early years of schooling, including the phonics screening test and new numeracy assessments. While well-intentioned, these measures also reflect a growing performativity in our system and a pressure to quantify success and failure earlier and more frequently.

We must ask: What are we measuring, and why?

As a school community, we are committed to balancing accountability with purpose. We recognise the need to track progress, but not at the cost of creativity, joy, or a child’s natural curiosity. The real measure of a school should be found in the richness of its relationships, the depth of its learning culture, and the compassion with which it supports each learner’s journey.

At our school, we are proud of the way our students engage with challenge, support one another, and bring their full selves into their learning. The recent NAPLAN results, alongside many other markers of student growth, remind us of the strength within our community.

We celebrate these achievements not as an endpoint, but as part of an ongoing story, one that we write together, with curiosity, community and compassion at its core.

Kerryn Sandford

Principal

Pink in July