Dear Parents and Carers,

I wanted to share a quick update and highlight a few takeaways from our 2025 NAPLAN results.
The results are strong overall, with most students performing well above the national minimum standards and the state average. That’s a credit to the effort our students put in, the work our staff are doing every day, and the support you continue to provide at home.

There’s clear improvement in most areas. Year 5 results in both Reading and Numeracy have steadily improved since 2023, with this year’s group doing particularly well. That reflects high quality teaching across 2024 and 2025, as well as the more focused masterclass structure we were able to run last year. It meant students had more concentrated exposure to our new Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) model in numeracy, and it’s great to see that starting to come through in the data.

Year 3 Reading also lifted this year. That reflects the strong teaching across Years 2 and 3 over the past two years, as well as some early gains from last year’s Year 2 pilot of our EDI approach in delivering UFLI, our structured and systematic phonics program. Year 3 Numeracy has dipped slightly over the past few years, and our leadership team is already looking into that to make sure our new teaching practices are covering any gaps in student learning.

While we’re really encouraged by the growth, we also know we’re not where we want to be just yet. PMPS has traditionally performed lower than other schools in our network, and behind schools with similar levels of student advantage. That’s a big part of why we’ve made the changes we have this year.

As I said earlier in the year, we’ve taken what we’ve seen working in some of the top-performing primary schools in Victoria and made it our own. These kinds of changes take time. They won’t all show up in the data straight away – but they will. I can already see it in the way our classrooms are running: stronger routines, more consistency, and more clarity about what great teaching and learning looks like. We’re laying better foundations now so that all kids have what they need to succeed long term.

Thanks again to our Year 3 and 5 students for giving it their best, and a big thank you to the staff who’ve supported them right through their journey here. And to you – thank you, as always, for being such an important part of our students’ lives and school community.

Individual NAPLAN reports for Year 3 and 5 students will arrive early next term and we’ll get them out to families as soon as we can.

Warm regards,

Tom Cain
Principal