They are the primary schools that have left their peers behind.
Spread from Red Range in the state's north to Berkeley West in the Illawarra, these five schools have succeeded through innovation and commitment, often in the face of adversity.
Fairfax Media has launched the School Report interactive portal, allowing parents, students and teachers to see how their schools are performing against their peers according to MySchool data from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority.
The research has revealed the state's top overachieving primary schools.
The five schools span the independent and public sectors, with annual student enrolments ranging from 28 to 214, and yearly income from $500,000 to $4 million.
They were selected on the basis of their NAPLAN performance relative to their ICSEA, which measures a child's educational advantage according to their parents' educational attainment and occupation combined with census data.
Among them is Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Sydney's inner-west, a school of 127 students, most living in public housing flats, that was never going to let circumstance get in the way of its NAPLAN results.
They managed to put up to 100 points between them and the NAPLAN scores of students at similar schools in year three grammar, reading and spelling, according to the School Report data.
The school, which has a relatively low ICSEA of 819, has been transformed by its principal, John Farrell, and needs-based funding for targeted services such as speech therapists, with many students struggling with standard Australian English before they entered kindergarten.
William Bayldon Public School, on the NSW north coast, is another example of education overcoming adversity.
The school of 214 students in Sawtell has pushed out a 50 point gap across the board in its reading, grammar, numeracy and writing from year three to year five, compared with schools of similar socio-economic status.
The remote Red Range Public School and Berkeley West Public School in the Illawarra also led the field in their areas, despite both having ICSEAs below 900, with particularly strong results across spelling and grammar for students in year three.
Save Our Schools spokesman Trevor Cobbold said the work done by the public schools was a model for others to follow.
"You would hope that success can now be spread through more needs-based federal funding," he said.
At the other end of the scale, the Northside Montessori school in Pymble has pushed beyond its competitors through an emphasis on "not teaching testing", according to principal Barbara Maxfield.
The school's results in year three are about average for its ICSEA of 1171 – but by year five, the students have opened up a significant gap on their competitors.
"For us, it is all about hands-on material – that really comes to the fore in the upper primary, when we see our children creatively stepping up at that level," said Ms Maxfield. "For our parents, NAPLAN isn't the be-all and end-all, though."
NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said the results showed that needs-based funding for schools was working.
He repeated his calls for the federal government to fund the final two years of Gonski reforms.
"I believe that additional money, well spent, can have a huge impact on improved student results," he said.
With Marc Moncrief
