St Joseph’s Benalla and St Mary’s Mooroopna have been identified by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) as high-performing schools. Chief Executive Officer of Catholic Education Sandhurst, Mr Paul Desmond said he was enormously proud of all Sandhurst schools.

St Mary’s Mooroopna and St Joseph’s Benalla have been identified by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) as high-performing schools. Chief Executive Officer of Catholic Education Sandhurst, Mr Paul Desmond said he was enormously proud of all Sandhurst schools.

“I acknowledge the commitment to continued improvement in quality learning and teaching from all schools in the Sandhurst Diocese.  However, on this occasion I would like to celebrate the two Sandhurst Primary Schools that were recognised as high-performing schools on the relaunched MySchool website,” he said.

ACARA has identified high-performing schools in each state and territory, including primary and secondary schools, all sectors, high-and low-ICSEA schools, and big and small schools.

St Mary's Mooroopna and St Joseph's Benalla were both listed as high-performing schools, using 2022 NAPLAN results to indicate that students have been performing significantly above all other students nationally with similar socio-educational advantage.

Principal of St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, Anthony Butts said he was filled with great pride and excitement after hearing about the outstanding results. 

“Being officially recognised as a high-performing school is a great acknowledgement of the dedicated and hard-working staff of St Mary’s,” he said. 

“Over the last three years our results have been extremely pleasing and this is the product of a lot of hard work from our teachers, students and families.” 

“Our most recent School Improvement Plan (SIP) focused on our staff working as professional learning communities along with developing a new assessment and reporting schedule. This has resulted in a cycle of assessment, teaching and learning that allows teachers to track students and plan the curriculum at inpidual levels.” 

Mary Dunstan from St Joseph's Benalla was also thrilled to receive the news as she thanked staff for continually striving to put in place evidence based Visible Learning thinking into day-to-day classroom practices. She also took the opportunity to acknowledge past principal, Trish Merlo and Deputy Principal, Leigh Symons who implemented this vision from 2019 with all staff. 

"In 2020, St Joseph’s School joined only a handful of other schools in Australia to achieve Visible Learning certification, in recognition of the progress, as well as the achievement the school had made with the Visible Learning+ system," she said. 

“From that time, they committed to raising student outcomes, having high expectations for all students and implementing many strategic plans to achieve their goals,” said Mary. 

Both Principals were delighted to share the good news with their wider school communities.