Welcome to the website of the NSW Secondary Principals' Council. The Council is an incorporated professional association, representing almost 500 principals of government high schools, central schools and schools for special purposes across the state.

Four key pillars underpin our work:
•    advocacy for principals, secondary students and school communities;
•    support for principals through high quality professional connections;
•    professional learning to develop the expertise of principals and school leaders;
•    collegial networks that build the capacity and sustainability of public secondary schools.

Our commitment is ultimately to enhance learning, teaching and outcomes for every student with whom principals and schools work.

27 April 2010

Dear Mr McAlpine

Thank you for your letter of 15 March 2010 setting out the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council’s views on the My School website and recommendations for its further development. I appreciated the clarity with which you set out your Council’s position and your offer to provide constructive advice on ways in which the site might be developed. The recent meeting between Robert Randall (General Manager, Curriculum) and Dave Wasson (A/General Manager, Reporting) from ACARA with members of your Executive was important in increasing our understanding of the concerns of the NSW SPC and, I believe, a first step in constructive dialogue.

SHORTCUTS ON MY SCHOOL WEBSITE WORRY PRINCIPALS

Research by the NSW Secondary Principals' Council (SPC) has revealed major flaws in the way that the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) calculates the Index of Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) for 2010.

The ICSEA is the basis for the lists of "statistically similar schools" which the Deputy Prime Minister urges parents to use to judge the performance of their child's school.  It is one of the major pillars on which the My School website is founded.

The SPC President, Jim McAlpine, said today: "A clerical oversight in setting up the My School website gave SPC researchers a window into the 'before and after' versions of the ICSEA for hundreds of schools".

Instead of using each school's actual student enrolment data, ACARA used average data from the 2006 Australian Census to calculate the degree of educational advantage or disadvantage for each family in each school.  The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has cautioned against using its statistical data in this way.

MY SCHOOL GETS 'F' FOR NUMERACY

The Principal of a comprehensive public high school in Sydney's western suburbs opens up the My School website to find its NAPLAN results headed mostly in red and pink, indicating that not only is their performance below the national average on just about everything, but they are even below the "similar schools" average on quite a few. The national comparison wasn't a great surprise, since one in three Year 7/9 students is a newly arrived migrant (many of them refugees) and 85% of the students overall come from a non-English-speaking background. But the "similar schools" comparison hurts.

The picture on the "similar schools" page itself was even worse, with purple highlights all over the place, indicating that the school's averages were either "below" or "substantially below" most of the other schools on the list.

As a parent, what do you make of this? The Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has invited parents to "rouse on" their school's principal in these situations. But the fiercely supportive community of this school are far more likely to rouse on the DPM for insulting their school and the work it is doing.

NEW DIRECTIONS IN SCHOOLS FUNDING

MY SCHOOL AND SIMILAR SCHOOLS

By Bernie Shepherd, Retired Principal

When he woke up on Thursday January 28th this year Shaun Addy, the Principal of Blacktown Boys' High in Western Sydney was amused to open the My School website and find that his school was "similar" to the Alice Springs School of the Air.  On the same day the parents of Terrigal High School (NSW Central Coast, 1,274 students) would have scratched their heads when they saw that their school was "similar" to Buntine Primary School (WA wheat belt, 300 km north of Perth, 19 students).

You might have made one of the reportedly nine million hits on the website as people checked to see how your local school was faring against other, similar schools. But your first encounter with the My School website's "Statistically Similar Schools" page was probably just as mystifying until – and unless – you read the fine print.  The clue is in the word "statistically".

NSWSPC response to the My School Website

Sent to Professor Barry McGaw ACARA

The following statement arises from deliberations within the SPC in response to the launch of the My School website and in the understanding that the website will continue to be a feature of the education landscape in Australia for the foreseeable future.

While we continue to question the imperative for its establishment, we are prepared to work constructively with any initiative that seeks to provide accurate, meaningful and usable information to parents about the operation of our schools.  We set out a number of recommendations which we believe would make a positive contribution towards this goal.