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February 3, 2026 — 5:00am
It’s been almost 30 years since principal Craig Jennings first walked through the gates of St Albans Secondary College.
Back then, it was dismissed as “a westie school” – burdened with the weight the disparaging tag carries.
Now it’s “a maths school” that is punching above its weight and outperforming other schools with a similar demographic background. General mathematics is the school’s top VCE subject – 11 of its students attained 40+ scores last year.
The Age is examining VCE performance across the state as part of the launch of the Victorian Schools Guide, a new interactive dashboard that will allow parents and students to examine the performance of the state’s government, Catholic and independent schools.
The dashboard will be updated regularly and feature new sections in the future, to help guide students and their families in school choices.
Technically, St Albans Secondary College is still a disadvantaged school. More than half its students are in the bottom quarter for socio-educational advantage. Its ICSEA value, a measure of a school’s advantage based largely on parents’ educational qualifications and occupations, was 962 last year, below the nationwide school average of 1000.
But the school is no longer what former federal MP Maxine McKew described in her book Class Act.
The bad old days when it was “a tough place with poor attendance, low performance and almost zero expectations” are gone.
On each of these measures, the school has turned things around.
Student attendance is well above 90 per cent. The large secondary school of 1715 students has also defied its demographic, consistently recording a median VCE study score of 30+ over the past decade (it dipped to 29 only once.) Between 2022 and 2024 the school achieved a median study score of 31, although in 2025 it reverted to 30.
Jennings said it wasn’t uncommon for year 11 students to do year 12 maths.
“The number of kids in any one year doing maths is greater than the number of kids doing English,” he said.
Apart from general maths, biology, mathematical methods and psychology were standout subjects last year. Three 40+ scores were achieved in each of them.
NAPLAN results back this up. The school’s year 7 and year 9 students achieve well above average results in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy compared with schools that have similar backgrounds.
The college, one of The Age’s 2019 Schools that Excel winners, has become the local school of choice. In the past five years, only students living in its zone have been accepted.
The Victorian Schools Guide shows Dromana Secondary College is another school punching above its weight. Members of the school’s leadership team visit up to 20 feeder primary schools to speak to prospective students.
“We say, ‘We will work with you to make sure that you complete your secondary schooling, and we will make sure we have the honour of shaking your hand at valedictory at the end of that journey,’” principal Alan Marr said.
VCE students are encouraged to choose “passion subjects” that they will do best in rather than opt for ones which are scaled up.
It’s paying off. The school’s median study score has consistently been 30 or above over the past decade. For the past three years, that score has been 32.
Last year the school achieved nine 40+ scores in general mathematics, its best result in a decade, six 40+ scores in English and five 40+ scores in outdoor education.
The school’s NAPLAN results also show it outperforms similar schools in writing and reading in years 7 and 9.
Dromana Secondary was one of just 11 Melbourne government schools to achieve a median study score of 32 last year, despite having the lowest ICSEA value of these schools by a large margin.
Just under 30 per cent of students rank in the bottom quarter for socio-educational advantage, according to data from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority.
The school has an ICSEA of 1018, slightly above the nationwide average of 1000.
Almost on par with the nationwide average is Melba College, in Croydon, where 35 per cent of students rank in the bottom quarter for socio-educational advantage compared with 25 per cent nationwide.
Principal Matthew Lee said a high proportion of his students arrived as refugees from Myanmar.
While some students’ parents went to university, others graduated or didn’t complete school.
“A not insignificant portion will be on that lowest socio-economic rung or be part of our welfare system. And so there’s a level of disadvantage that you are working with,” Lee said.
Despite this, Melba College’s median study score has risen as its VCE results have steadily improved over the past decade.
In 2016, its median study score was 26, but for the past three years, it has been 29 or above. In 2024, the school joined the “30 club” for the first time with a median study score of 31.
It’s a coming-of age milestone for the school, which was formed from the 2012 merger of Maroondah Secondary College and Croydon Secondary College.
“There was a cultural shift going on at that time, which ended up helping us define who we were and what was important to us,” Lee said.
The small school with just 663 students was also one of The Age’s Schools that Excel winners in 2024.
Lee, who joined the school seven years ago, said maths and English were the school’s standout subjects, thanks to staff input that included running morning classes.
He credited students for their camaraderie, which he believes was fostered during morning catch-up sessions over coffee and hot chocolate.
“Sharing some food, stories and connection at the start of the day is powerful,” he said. “And then, importantly, threading that through the rest of the school year.
“There is an element of competition to the VCE, but our students seem to recognise that if they all do well, they all get boosted up,” Lee said.
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