Parents flocked to the My School website when it was launched last week but local principals say some caution needs to be exercised.
The Government says the website is designed to empower parents however wide fears remain about the information and the way this information could be utilised.
Two local secondary school principals have welcomed increased information for parents but are not without reservations.
Both said the information contained on the website has been available from their schools for a significant period.
Brother John Hilet of Red Bend Catholic College said non-government schools such as his own have been required to include information contained on the website in annual reports for around the last three years.
Principal of Forbes High School Craig Petersen said predecessors of the current NAPLAN testing (National Assessment- Literacy and Numeracy testing on which the website is based) have been available to parents for a significant period.
“From my perspective a lot of the information coming out has been available to parents for many years,” Mr Petersen said.
Brother John said that part of what concerns him is that information is now available in a central location, allowing the formation of simplistic comparisons between schools.
“One website can simplify the process of creating league tables. I’d hate to see league tables,” he said.
Both principals said the website should be read with some caution.
Brother John said NAPLAN tests were designed as a measure of individual student progress.
“They were never designed to compare schools,” he said.
The two principals both said the website gave NAPLAN results for students but failed to take into account the starting point or track the improvement of students.
Brother John said a school may be doing good work to lift its students from a low educational starting point but the information contained on the website fails to show this progress.
Mr Petersen said his school had been identified as performing well above trend in student improvement but the website failed to show this.
He said the website measures performance in reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy but fails to factor in other subject areas and extra curricular activities which contribute to the growth of the student as a whole.
For the purposes of comparison, schools are placed into groups of 60 “statistically similar” schools.
Brother John and Mr Petersen both had concerns about the groupings their schools had been placed in.
Mr Petersen said the groupings seemed to ignore factors such as language background and geography.
“There’s a danger in purely economic judgements because they are a bit simplistic,” he said.
Forbes High School has been grouped with schools such as Walkervale State School in Bundaberg QLD, Calvary Lutheran School in Morphett Vale SA and Christmas Island District High School to name a few.
Brother John said the circumstances of Red Bend Catholic College, a non-government high school with a 14 per cent Indigenous student population and located in a semi-rural area, makes it difficult to find schools with which to compare the College.
Red Bend Catholic College was placed with statistically similar schools such as Yeoval Central School, Belmore Boys High School and the Charters Towers School of Distance Education.
Both principals urged parents not to rely solely on the My School website when making decisions.
“My advice to parents in my school is to use the information you get from schools because it gives context,” Mr Petersen said.
“Most important is for parents to come up to the school and speak to the principal.
“We try to make ourselves available whenever we can.”
Brother John echoed these sentiments.
“I hope parents look at more than one figure,” he said.
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