Independent Education Union of Australia

The Independent Education Union of Australia maintains its commitment to work with the Federal Government and ACARA in order to address concerns regarding the MySchool website.

The ACARA initiative for the establishment of a working party with IEUA and AEU representatives is welcomed by the IEUA and is consistent with the approaches taken by the IEUA to address our members’ concerns.

We see this as a positive and an active step to guarantee that the information provided to parents is accurate and transparent.

As the Deputy Prime Minister is aware, the IEUA did not implement bans on the NAPLAN testing, despite our concerns regarding its flawed use on the MySchool website.

Instead, the IEUA has focussed its efforts on improving the MySchool website.

As part of record, the following is an outline of our concerns and recommended suggestions which have been raised with ACARA:

The Concerns

1. ICSEA

The Index of Community Socio-Education Advantage (ICSEA) is not a sufficiently robust and accurate assessment of school similarity, as evidenced by the controversy over many of the ‘like’ school groupings and the need for manual adjustment of hundreds of school scores already.

The current ICSEA rankings do not reflect the school population. Parent Assocations have argued that the ICSEA data produces significantly different ratings from other data such as Student Family Occupation (SFO) or Education Maintenance Allowance ( EMA) used to identify disadvantaged schools

Importantly, however, ICSEA methodology ignores the fact that schools from the same area can draw different student populations. This therefore undermines the integrity of any comparison of “like schools”.

2. Student achievement and progress

NAPLAN test results are a point of time view of the literacy and numeracy skills of individual students.

The IEUA recognises that the tests are a good diagnostic tool for teachers to use to identify the particular strengths and weaknesses of the students in their care and to guide revision of their work programmes or lesson plans to support student learning.

However, the current use of NAPLAN data as a student/school result representation is misleading.

The “average” score representation sheds little useful light on relative achievement on the NAPLAN tests. The “average” score is provided without simple, or easy reference to relative distribution, difference, or notional benchmark.

The IEUA believes that very little information can be gleaned by users attempting to compare the average results where the difference is 10, 20 or even 30 points.

Further, representing results only by average score more readily facilitates the creation of simplistic league tables by those who seek to sensationalise the data.

3. Small schools are disadvantaged

In some cases, large schools are grouped with small schools. This ignores inconsistency of aggregated and average data with very small sample sizes in small schools.

The current figure of 5 students arises, not from any statistical consideration of level of error, but rather a policy position. Further, while the MySchool website does provide some qualification of school results for various cohorts, this information is not currently easily uncovered by users of the site.

IEUA believes that errors of over 20+ points on the average score for cohorts between 10 and 15 students should necessitate a revision of the minimum cohort reporting requirements up from the current figure of 5 students.

4 Change in population of students

A change in the population of cohort of students will radically affect any tracking of progress over time.

It must be recognised that many schools, particularly those who enrol children of defence personnel, will experience significant changes in student population not only from year to year but also during the year.

This will result in errors in any mapping of student achievement progress.

5. Other significant data issues

Other significant issues regarding data include:

· Data did not take into account Non English Speaking Background (NESB) students and made no reference to this as a contextual factor;

· Schools which have a high intake of students with special needs and learning difficulties were not appropriately recognised;

· Data ignored variations in the number of students who are absent or exempt from NAPLAN testing.

6 Like Schools - Search mechanisms

The IEUA does not believe that parents are well served by the current display of data. In discussions with parent stakeholders, it has been highlighted that parents are more interested in having flexibility in the website which would ensure self–selection of a number of parameters of interest which could include geographic location, sectoral type and other identifiers.

The Solutions

1. Review into ICSEA, extending the values used in developing the index

Currently the ICSEA is based on a regression analysis using only limited variables. It limits itself to a measure of small communities, using limited (two, rather than an range of income variables) variables and therefore falls short in being any type index of school/socio-educational advantage.

It must recognise that school communities are not homogenous and that variations can exist within the income ranges.

For example: Both School A and School B may have an ICSEA based on a high income variable, however School A may have 90% of their population in earning greater than $100 000 per year, and School B may have 90% of their population not earning more than $100 000 but earning over $60,000.

This causes an obvious significant variation in the school populations, however the ICSEA will rate these school populations as being ‘statistically similar”.

A review into the ICSEA is not an impossible request and can only result in assurances that data provided to parents is accurate.

2. ICSEA to be used as a point of comparison, rather than a sorting mechanism

The MySchool website can be enabled to provide parents with the ability to choose a sort based on geographical areas, sectoral or other aspects of interest. This will provide parents with the information that they seek and remove the anomalies which currently exist in the current ICSEA sort.

Changes to the “sort mechanism” on the MySchool Website will give parents flexibility and choice in their use of the website.

3. Relative student performance

The reporting of students’ average scores should be replaced with a graphical representation of relative performance (as in the Victorian Government School Performance Summary) or an alternative proxy such as percentage achievement above minimum benchmarks.

However, in doing so, it must be recognised that any “value added” mechanism is sensitive to random errors and international experience regarding “value added” results must be taken on board in developing a mechanism which appropriately maps student progress.

In addition to this, significant changes to the student population must be highlighted on the website to identify impacts on year comparisons and student progress.

A move away from the simplistic average score to a more richer display of student progress will protect our students and schools from simplistic league tables.

4. Small schools

There is capacity for ACARA with the support of Education Ministers to adjust the minimum student cohort at which schools’ results are reported on the MySchool Website.

The IEUA recommends that schools with fewer than 15 students in the NAPLAN cohort should not have student data reported in any comparative measures or where reported, measures of error displayed immediately adjacent to test results.

5 Composition of School population

Information regarding the composition of the school population in terms of NESB students, students with special needs and learning difficulties and where there have been variations in the number of students absent or exempt from NAPLAN testing should be more readily identified on the site.

Finally, the IEUA remains committed to developing best practice models of reporting which support, not disadvantage teachers and their schools and communities.

We will continue to work with ACARA to improve the quality and structure of information available on the MySchool website.

Yours Sincerely

Chris Watt

Federal Secretary

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