By Sahar Foladi
Dandenong North Primary School has been crowned No.1 for NAPLAN results in the state.
According to The Age, 16 out of the state’s top-20 improved performers in literacy and numeracy are government schools including DNPS, Keysborough Secondary College and Lyndale Greens Primary School.
Independent schools Killester College in Springvale and Haileybury College in Keysborough also made the list.
Dandenong North Primary principal Paul Hilton is extremely proud of the whole school community.
“These results are about everyone from our Prep teachers, right through to Grade 6 including English as an Additional Language (EAL), our intervention and enrichment programs along with specialist staff, admin staff and most importantly our students and their families.”
Greater Dandenong is ranked as the second most disadvantaged municipality in Victoria, on the Commonwealth Government Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD).
Released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) it’s based on 2016 Census findings for income levels, education, English fluency, home ownership and other factors.
“I know the importance of being literate and numerate in Australian society – therefore what matters most is that our students are achieving in these two areas so that they have the best opportunities in life,“ Mr Hilton said.
“The importance of these results for the future of our students is what I am most thankful for.”
DNPS is the only school in the state where students in all year levels made progress well above average every year the test was conducted from 2019 to 2022 across reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy.
“We analyse data to assess areas of challenge for children and to celebrate the growth and improvement made by students at each year level. This data then forms the basis for our next steps in individual student learning,” Mr Hilton said.
Killester College in Springvale also made it to top 20 with 90 per cent of students progressing well above the average.
City of Greater Dandenong is listed in the top eight most welcoming city for refugees in Australia, according to the ‘Settlement Cities’ report by Edmund Rice Centre.
Each year, Greater Dandenong welcomes around 2,700 newly arrived people, many of which are refugees and people seeking asylum.
In this case DNPS is made up of many pupils with migrants and refugee background and the school supports their students through programs such as EAL.
“The implementation of enrichment and intervention classes including the three phase EAL program means that our children are both supported and challenged to achieve,” Mr Hilton said.
The school also has supported parents through their Afghan Mothers Group for more than 10 years.
Retired former principal, Jenny Mackay said, “From the school’s perspective we’ve tried to work hard on trying to educate the mums so they’re able to help their children with learning and understand what they’re doing.
“We’ve got our multicultural aide, our EAL teachers and of course the parents that have been with us over the years, they’re all part of what we have become.”
Mr Hilton said he’s looking forward to continue the great work begun by his predecessors and mentors, Kevin and Jenny Mackay.
“We will continue to implement what we know works best while continuing to evaluate and refer to research-based practices in order for us to maintain our top spot in Victoria.”
The completion of the Mackay Gymnasium is scheduled for completion early in term two this year.
Glenn Fahey, education program director at the Centre for Independent Studies, told The Age government schools routinely and at times perform better than non-government schools.
“State schools do really well and unfortunately that gets sometimes buried in simplistic analysis. But when you compare similarly advantaged schools, I think public schools on the whole can be really proud of their efforts.”
