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My School website - Serious Concerns identified in VIEU Principals’ Survey

Following the launch of the My School website, VIEU surveyed its Principal members about the data presented on the My School website, including the accuracy of the ICSEA index, the appropriateness of their school’s statistically similar group, and any other anomalies or concerns with the website

Principals identified a number of serious concerns, with the most commonly cited being:

  • Significant anomalies in the similar schools grouping
  • concern about the lack of similarity of schools in respect to school size, rural/metropolitan location, difference in level of schooling, i.e. primary versus secondary, small Catholic primary schools in the same group as large, much more highly resourced independent schools.
  • Some schools identified in the similar group have quite different ICSEA  scores.
  • Inaccuracy of the ICSEA score
  • the ICSEA doesn’t take into account the actual population of the school, that is, Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE), low SES, refugee population, indigenous etc
  • some scores appear to be miscalculated, that is too high or too low in comparison to other schools known to be not only similar in actual school population, but also clearly in a similar census area.
  • schools identified in similar group have vastly different school populations but same ICSEA score

One principal in a Melbourne primary school stated “Our school’s allocated ICSEA may be indicative of “households without children” or “all households” in our suburb, but it is not indicative of our school population. We have 50% on the Education Maintenance Allowance, up to 60% NESB who sat NAPLAN, yet we are compared to schools in upper socio economic suburbs, including an independent girls’ grammar school in a high socio economic suburb.”

  • Website has led to inaccurate judgement of schools’ performance - gives too much emphasis to NAPLAN test as it is the only thing reported.
  • Concern that despite the government’s rhetoric about the importance of the “context” of schools, this has not taken into account by people using the website. The website itself encourages this with geographically close schools  listed on each school’s report on the website, irrespective of the different ICSEA scores of the schools.
  • Concern over the injustice done to schools by media’s irresponsible and  sensationalising of out of context data such as the  “5 best and worst  schools” and the ranking of every school in NSW based on the crude addition of the various scores for reading, numeracy.  

This point was well made by one principal who stated in a letter to his Federal Member of Parliament, “Today’s ranking of schools in the Herald Sun is just a start to  the ranking of schools on information that was gathered 8 months ago (out of date) and was gathered from a 45 minute test. Did you happen to notice that the majority of the five top schools were in the top ICSEA brackets and the bottom 5 schools are in the bottom brackets? This is name and shame stuff.”

The frustration of principals was aptly captured in the comment of a Principal in a small rural Victorian primary school who was baffled by the lack of similarity in the schools included in his similar schools group. “I am torn between spending more time on this [the My Schools website] and attacking it, or treating it with disdain and getting on with my real job.”

VIEU will continue to raise these serious concerns with the federal Minister, Julia Gillard.   

~22 February 2010