The My School website has been updated for 2022 with new data, including the first NAPLAN results and attendance data in 2 years.
The cancellation of NAPLAN for 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic meant there was no NAPLAN data last year, but with NAPLAN successfully undertaken across the country in 2021, the My School website has now been updated with school-level NAPLAN data.
“My School is an excellent resource to help parents, schools and governments understand the performance of schools,” said ACARA CEO, David de Carvalho.
Over the last 3 years, My School has had an average of 2.3 million visitors. In 2020, My School was relaunched with an improved presentation of data and a stronger focus on student progress, resulting in enhanced quality and usefulness of the information.
The “Student progress” information includes tables showing the percentage of students at the school whose progress was better than expected, given the school’s average score 2 years ago and the level of community socio-educational advantage.
In the 2022 update, more than 500 Australian schools showed well above the average progress of students with the same starting score and similar backgrounds for at least one domain and more than 30% of these schools were in regional or remote areas.
My School includes an Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) that indicates the average educational advantage of the school’s students and is calculated using information about a parent’s occupation and education, school geographical location and the proportion of Indigenous students. A school’s ICSEA value is provided to encourage taking socio-educational advantage into account when comparing school achievement.
“Too often, media organisations try to construct crude ‘league tables’ based on overall achievement without considering the schools’ level of socio-educational advantage or the amount of progress the students have made in the previous 2 years. Such comparisons are meaningless,” Mr de Carvalho said.
“The schools that are punching above their weight are those that are achieving above expectation in terms of progress on where their students were 2 years ago, taking into account their level of socio-educational advantage. Let’s find out what those schools are doing and think about how good practice can be replicated.”
The 2022 My School update contains:
· 2021 NAPLAN results for schools
· 2021 school profile and population data
· 2021 school attendance data
· 2020 school financial information, including capital expenditure and funding sources
· 2020 post-school destinations data.
Recent research conducted for ACARA by market research specialist EY Sweeney indicates that of the parents surveyed who visit My School:
· 44% do so to see how their child’s school is performing in literacy and numeracy
· 41% do so to help inform decisions made in relation to their child’s education
· 32% do so to fairly compare their child’s school’s performance with other schools
