How Northholm is bucking the trend: A culture of academic growth
National headlines have again brought into sharp focus one of the great challenges facing Australian education. The latest international Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results reveal that Australian students’ performance in reading and mathematics has fallen to its lowest level since testing began, continuing a decline spanning more than two decades.
While we know that no single test can define a child, a teacher or a school, standardised assessments provide an important lens through which we can examine trends over time. And at Northholm Grammar, our trajectory is increasingly moving in a different direction.
Our results across standardised testing, including NAPLAN, HSC and other measures of student growth, continue to demonstrate encouraging progress in literacy and numeracy. This is particularly evident as our students move through the School, with recent NAPLAN results showing strong performance across Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation, and Numeracy. We celebrate this, but we should also understand why it is occurring.
Results such as these are not accidental. They are the product of a deliberate culture we are building at Northholm: one characterised by high expectations, excellent teaching, academic rigour and classrooms where students are known, challenged and supported to achieve their best. At a time when national discussion is increasingly returning to the importance of explicit teaching, strong foundational knowledge and orderly classrooms, these principles are already deeply embedded in our educational direction. We believe that excellent learning begins with excellent teaching.
This commitment has been strengthened in 2026 through the Northholm Institute for Cultivating Excellence, with an intentional focus on evidence-informed teaching practice, instructional leadership and the professional growth of our teachers. Our particular investment in literacy and numeracy recognises that these are not simply subjects or test scores; they are the foundations upon which almost all future learning is built.
Perhaps most importantly, academic excellence at Northholm does not exist in isolation. It flourishes within a culture of aspiration, belonging, character and genuine relationships between students and teachers.
When the national trend tells us that improvement is difficult, our response should not be to lower expectations. It should be to raise them. It takes an intentional attitude and genuine effort on behalf of educators, students and parents. I can literally see before my eyes a School community that is moving ahead and strengthening in this way.
I am encouraged that is the culture we are building at Northholm, and our students are demonstrating what is possible.
