High care, high challenge, high achievement

The September release of Australia’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025 results generated contrasting headlines. Australian students recorded their lowest results in reading and mathematics, continuing a longer-term decline across all three assessed domains. At the same time, Australia remained above the OECD average in science, reading and mathematics. 

The PISA assesses how well 15-year-old students apply their knowledge and skills to real-world situations. Rather than testing mastery of a particular curriculum, it asks students to interpret information, reason, evaluate evidence, solve unfamiliar problems and use what they know. 

The results of Walford’s students who participated in PISA 2025 results provide an encouraging snapshot of achievement and of the conditions in which learning takes place at Walford. 

Strong performance across the cohort 

Walford’s participating students performed strongly across all three PISA domains: 

• Science: 19% were high performers, compared with 12% across Australia and 10% in South Australia. Just 1% were in the low-performance band, compared with 18% nationally and in South Australia. 

• Reading: 24% were high performers, compared with 11% across Australia and 10% in South Australia. No Walford participants were in the low-performance band, compared with 23% nationally and 24% in South Australia. 

• Mathematics: 17% were high performers, compared with 10% across Australia and 8% in South Australia. Just 2% were in the low-performance band, compared with 29% nationally and 30% in South Australia. 

The mathematics profile is especially encouraging within a national picture in which girls’ mathematics performance declined between 2022 and 2025, and boys continued to outperform girls. 

Compared with students from similar socioeconomic contexts, Walford students were markedly less likely to be in the low-performance group in every domain. Walford had a higher proportion of high-performing readers, while high performance in science and mathematics was broadly comparable. 

Walford is providing a strong academic foundation across a wide range of learners. Our continuing work is to move more students from solid achievement into the highest levels of scientific and mathematical reasoning. 

Creating the conditions for learning 

PISA also asks students about their attitudes towards learning and their experience of school. 

Walford students described science classrooms that were orderly and conducive to learning. They were substantially less likely than Australian students to report frequent noise and disorder, students not listening, delays in beginning work, or students being unable to work effectively. 

Walford students reported high attendance data and high levels of teacher support. They described teachers who showed an interest in every student’s learning, provided additional help when needed, continued teaching until students understood, and created opportunities for students to express their views. 

Students also reported strong belonging, safety, curiosity and persistence. All responding students indicated that they felt safe in their classrooms, in other places around the School, and travelling to and from Walford. They described applying additional effort when learning became challenging, finishing what they started, checking their understanding, adapting unsuccessful strategies, and asking teachers and classmates for help. 

Walford’s culture of high care and high expectations is visible across these responses. Care is not the absence of challenge. Rather, care and challenge create the conditions in which girls can flourish. Effective care creates the trust, security and support from which students can take intellectual risks, persist through difficulty and respond productively when they do not yet understand. 

Knowledge, thinking and technology 

PISA has reignited debate about knowledge, teaching, technology and artificial intelligence. At Walford, our approach is “both–and”, not “either–or”. Students need rich and well-sequenced knowledge because knowledge gives them something with which to think. They also need opportunities to apply that knowledge: to interpret, question, connect, evaluate, create and solve problems.   

The same balance shapes our approach to technology and AI. The OECD’s PISA 2025 findings associate excessive or recreational technology use with weaker performance. Students using AI for learning were better served when they were taught to evaluate the quality of the information it generated.  

Purposeful use and clear guardrails allow us to protect students’ attention and human connection while developing the digital, critical and ethical capabilities they need. Technology should extend learning, not replace attention, effort, judgement or understanding. 

Continuous, data-informed improvement 

PISA is designed primarily to evaluate education systems, not individual schools. Walford’s results reflect 21 students at one point in 2025. They are indicative, should not be used to rank schools, and cannot provide a complete account of learning at Walford. 

The results sit alongside our 2025 NAPLAN data, in which students across Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 performed well above national benchmarks in reading, writing, grammar and numeracy. We consider these external measures alongside student feedback, classroom evidence, internal assessment, and the experiences and voices of students and teachers. 

The PISA report affirms strong achievement, safety, belonging, teacher support and classroom culture. It also focuses our attention on further extending high-performing students, sustaining strong reading across the curriculum and ensuring that technology is used with educational purpose. 

Continuous improvement requires us to recognise what is working, examine what lies beneath the data and identify where greater possibility remains. 

High care and high expectations, together, support every girl to achieve her best, her way. 

Dr Deborah Netolicky
Principal