Reading the PISA Results Well

The 2025 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results were released last week and, as with NAPLAN, the national analysis followed within hours, some of it quite dramatic. Australia’s reading and mathematics scores are the lowest since testing began, with mathematics down 46 points since 2003. We still sit above the OECD average in every domain and tenth in the world in reading and science, so capability is not our problem.

The findings that held my attention were about classrooms rather than scores. Forty-one per cent of Australian students reported noise and disorder in lessons, against an OECD average of 31 per cent. Forty per cent said phones, apps or websites distracted them in class. Australia ranked 69th of 80 countries for classroom discipline, and 44 per cent had missed a day of school in the fortnight before the test. Jason Clare has called for a "digital detox" in schools, and the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher warned that heavy screen use is eroding attention across a generation.

None of this will surprise regular readers. We have written often about technology: hardware boundaries rather than software ones, a bedtime for the router, devices out of bedrooms, screen free meals, fighting the big fights early. Attention is formed, not given, and it is built or eroded by the habits of a household.

Which brings me to why I am not anxious about where GPCC sits. Our purpose is to equip students for a life of redemptive action through a holistic education grounded in a biblical perspective. Our Learning and Teaching Framework turns that purpose into daily practice, and it rests on three pillars.

Christian community comes first, because learning is relational. Settled, respectful classrooms where every student is known are not a pleasant extra. They are the precondition for everything else, and they are precisely what PISA found missing in so many Australian schools.

Effective teaching follows. Our teachers build carefully sequenced learning that develops core knowledge, communicate clear learning targets, draw on evidence based strategies and differentiate for the students in front of them. Mathematics rewards this patient, cumulative work more than any other subject.

Deep learning is the outcome, understanding that runs past the surface and grows into wisdom. We name the dispositions we are forming: willing, wondering, persevering, inquiring, discerning and celebrating. Perseverance is the one a distracted culture erodes first, and the one that lifts results.

I often tell staff that if we have a deep and holistic view of education that supports the whole person we will achieve well in the national and state mandated testing. Our 2025 NAPLAN results, with 80 per cent of students strong or exceeding against roughly 65 per cent nationally, suggest that is holding true.

At home, the most useful response to these results is unglamorous. Protect your child’s attention, keep devices out of bedrooms, and send them to school. Thank you, as always, for your partnership in this work.