Delivering School Transparency in Australia
National Reporting through My School
This case study describes the policy-making process in Australia leading to the public release of information on every school in Australia through the My School website. Policy lessons are described to provide insight for OECD member countries which may be grappling with similar issues in developing school accountability systems, particularly those working within federal-state contexts.
While some of the lessons from this policy development and implementation process relate specifically to Australia’s circumstances, there are general policy prescriptions of broader interest to other countries seeking to improve school education through measurement and reporting of key factors of school operations and performance.
Foreword
The launch of the My School website (www.myschool.edu.au) on 28 January 2010 forms part of a set of major reforms to Australia’s national education system. The federal distribution of responsibility for schooling, and the Australian Government’s role in this, historically, has imposed significant limitations on the supply by government of genuinely national data about Australian schools to ministers and to the community. My School and full population national student assessments in literacy and numeracy have dramatically closed this data gap.