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Hi, Wentyl! This week we released
the latest instalment of our series Australia's Top 100 Schools, this time examining private primary schools across the nation.
Similar to last week’s stories about top public primary schools, we analysed NAPLAN results, student-staff ratios, pupil attendance and socio-educational advantage to come up with the final list of top performers.
One issue we agonised over was the inclusion of big private schools with combined primary and secondary campuses, given that it's not exactly a like-for-like comparison with standalone primary schools.
In the end, we decided leaving out the combined schools would present only half the story, as all the biggest non-Catholic independent schools would be missing.
I’m glad we did, because our exclusive analysis shows many top-performing private primary schools are part of large educational juggernauts like Sydney Grammar and PLC in Melbourne.
All this excellence doesn’t come cheap: I was blown away to find out Sydney Grammar’s school fees for year 6 are $46,000.
 Our photographers had fun with the adorable kids at some of Australia's top-rated private primary schools this week, including (top row) Matteo, Leo, Chaithraa, (bottom row) Jace, Ally, Bella at Melbourne's Haileybury. Picture: David Caird
As I explained last week, kids at schools like this aren’t any smarter than those elsewhere, but they have a supportive school environment, excellent teachers, and an expectation they will work hard and do well. This, much more than the polo ovals and faux castles, is what parents (and plenty of grandparents, I suspect) are paying for at schools like this.
Thankfully, there are plenty of smaller – and vastly cheaper – hidden gems, such as Dara School in Adelaide, a boutique school for gifted students
which was crowned the best in the state. It's great to see a variety of educational approaches paying off. Also this week we’ve had plenty of other interesting stories, including one about the surprising answer to a question many frazzled new parents have surely asked –
do small children really do need a bath every night? We also look at
a radical new approach to parent-teacher interviews, ask why teachers are being forced to stand up in class and examine
the implications of the massive Canvas data hack. The global education giant caved to the hackers and says it "reached an agreement" the day before the sensitive data of millions of school and uni students was to be leaked. Makes you wonder which education platform will be targeted next ...
Have a great week and let us know what you think at
education@news.com.au
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