Overview

To identify accurately where the greatest educational need is across the Australian community, a basis for fair, consistent and accurate analysis of how schools are performing is needed.

As part of the Australian Government’s Education Revolution, nationally comparable information for each and every school in Australia is presented on the My School website.

The objective of My School is to inform the community on each school’s efforts and its broader operating context rather than rank or grade schools.  Each school has its own profile which presents an easy to understand, detailed picture using a wide range of balanced information about the students, the resourcing of the school and student outcomes in key areas such as literacy and numeracy and senior secondary achievements.

Parents, principals and the broader Australian community are now able to access comprehensive, accurate information about how their school is going.

This information will help school communities and governments to work out what needs to be done to drive improvement and identify and share what works well.

A report for each school is now available on the My School website.

The My School reports include:

School performance information

• Results from national literacy and numeracy tests
  Includes information about the average performance of the school’s students in national literacy and numeracy testing, and compares performance with that of other schools which serve socio economically similar student populations.
• Senior secondary outcomes
  Includes information such as the proportion of students that gain a Year 12 qualification, and numbers of students attaining qualifications in vocational education.

School resourcing information

• Socio-economic background of the students attending the school
  Describes the socio-economic background of the school’s student body, taking into account the education levels, occupations, and incomes of households in areas from which the school draws its students.
• Type of school
  Whether the school is a primary, secondary, or combined (both primary and secondary) school.
• Number and type of students
  Number of students enrolled (including breakdown by sex, indigenous).
• Student attendance rate
  Average rate of attendance of students enrolled at the school.

School capacity

• Number of teaching and non-teaching staff at the school
  Numbers of teachers, and numbers of other employees at the school such as administrative and maintenance staff.

To be published in 2010

• School income and resources
  Information about income received by the school, including school fees and funding from governments.

In future years My School will include:

• Parent, teacher and student satisfaction
  Results from satisfaction survey of parents, students and teachers
• Numbers/proportions of teachers by level of expertise

To identify best practice, the website compares the performance of statistically similar schools.

The My School profile pages were developed by the new national education authority, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)

For further information about the principles and protocols for reporting on schooling in Australia, please visit the MCEECDYA website.