The top 160 high schools for maths and literacy growth
Each lesson at Ingleburn High School is taught in two minutes. Teachers provide a new instruction approximately every two minutes. Every two minutes they check whether the student understands. Then they give feedback. How often? Every two minutes.
“It’s quite tiring,” says Georgina Koskinas, the school’s deputy principal for inclusion and support.
“The whole point is to keep them on task every two minutes so you can keep them engaged.”
Breaking classes into smaller intervals has led to major academic improvements; The school recorded the largest increase in literacy scores among similarly advantaged institutions. reporter Analysis of NAPLAN results found. NAPLAN data is taken from the government’s MySchool website and provided by the SchoolRank website, which allows parents to search and compare schools.
While the top ranks of HSC league tables are generally dominated by schools with the most advantaged students, the analysis tracked student performance from year 7 in 2023 to year 9 when they re-took the exams in 2025. Schools were grouped into quartiles based on socio-educational advantage.
Ingleburn High School’s two-minute guide is part of an explicit direct instruction framework it is adapting from a Data Works program in the US in 2022. The model was initially used to teach English as a second language to children.
“The principal at the time, Catherine Argyle, said: ‘This is what we need to do. This will work. This is for the context of our students,'” Koskinas said.
Teachers determine the “learning intention” and success criteria at the beginning of each lesson. They also carry around cases full of mini whiteboards. Teachers explain concepts, then test students. Students keep their answers on the board.
“If the majority of students understand, you can visibly see around the room very quickly,” he says.
There are formulas and sequences for classroom teachers. Teach first, ask a question, students share their answers in pairs, the teacher invites someone who does not volunteer to answer. The teacher listens before giving effective feedback. Or they re-teach the concept.
“When you think about the cognitive load of the child based on their age, what stage of adolescence they are in, the important thing is to keep them on task every two minutes so you can keep them engaged.”
The state’s elite schools all showed big gains in numbers, as did many girls’ schools, including Ravenswood, Tangara, Loreto Kirribilli and Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta.
Marist College North Shore, which has some of the largest gains in numeracy skills, has also adopted the intent-to-learn formula. Each lesson ends with an “exit ticket.”
“This could be something as simple as a short paper with one or two questions that they prepare at the end of class,” says Holly Potvin, chair of the school’s mathematics department.
The idea behind the concept is to check whether students understand what is being taught and teachers adapt to the next lesson.
The school’s head of teaching and learning, Daniel Junge, says the intention-to-learn course formula is also used in other subjects, allowing students to see how learning is relevant to them.
“’What do I get out of this?’ And then they can see the links to that.
Louise Millar, head of teaching and learning, said maths classes were not being streamed at Our Lady of Mercy in Parramatta.
“What you really want to say to all your students is that we all work hard together. You don’t miss anything just because you’re in the lower class. You get the same education,” he said.
The school’s success lies in its cautious approach to educational trends and its refusal to claim that they are the answer to everything. Students learn in 65-minute blocks; Millar says this means teachers can delve into subjects and there is a strong culture of learning.
“You don’t need bells and whistles. What you need is good leadership, good teachers, good culture, and sharing that culture with your parents and your community.”
St Andrew’s Cathedral School showed the greatest improvement overall and was among the best in writing; he attributes this success to his formal, structured approach to writing beyond just English.
“As the impacts of technology have become evident in students’ work over the past decade, we have seen the need to develop an open, interdisciplinary approach to teaching writing,” said Brad Swibel, the school’s assistant principal.
While students are taught subject-specific writing patterns, subject-specific words are taught to increase the clarity of students’ expressions. The Department of English focuses on “micro-skill” development. Short stories by authors Langston Hughes, Amy Tan, and Margaret Atwood are sample texts.
“There is no substitute for learning how to punctuate dialogue, develop sensory imagery, and modify sentence structures from the masters themselves,” he said.
“We found that complementing this with reflective writing helped students understand that all written expressions are intentional and that their narratives can have an impact on the audience, just like the authors they imitate.”
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