The School Improvement and Accountability policy requires that schools publish annually a School Report that describes the school’s performance.
The School Report is intended to give parents and other members of the community a clear sense of how students in the school are progressing and what is being done to maximise student achievement.
The School Report should be succinct and written with a clear sense of communicating with the local community. It must include:
Advice (including a checklist for 2010 School Reports) and, where appropriate, examples from 2009 School Reports are included to illustrate some effective ways of reporting these elements.
Given that parents already receive detailed achievement information on their children through twice yearly student reports, the School Report should seek to aggregate student achievement information in ways that tell a story about how the school is progressing.
It is for this reason that student achievement information must be contextualised to the local school environment. The School Report should answer the question – are the standards of student achievement good enough, given our context? To answer this question schools need to draw on information from a number of sources and compare student achievement over time, in relation to national and state standards and in relation to like schools.
Data on academic student achievement is derived from two sources – teacher judgements and systemic testing. It is expected that schools will use both to report on student achievement.
It is important to note that national benchmark data (national minimum standards data from 2008) alone is not sufficient to convey the full story of student achievement.
The link below will take you to a number of excerpts from 2008 School Reports that illustrate different ways of reporting student achievement.
The School Improvement and Accountability policy requires that School Plans include priorities. For this reason it is important that the annual School Report include information about progress in relation to planned priorities.
The link below will take you to a number of excerpts from 2008 School Reports that illustrate different ways of reporting progress on priorities.
Annual Budget and Accounts information is required in the School Report. The information needs to provide a succinct overview of the school’s financial operations and position.
In addition, there is a national reporting requirement that requires schools to report sources of income including income from Australian Government sources.
A template and guidelines for completing the Annual Budget and Accounts that addresses both the local policy requirements and the national reporting requirements is provided at the links below.
A spreadsheet template has been produced by Financial Services & Support for schools reporting their school Annual Budget and Accounts in this format. Please note that at the prompt, it is preferable for ease of use to save the spreadsheet to a folder on your computer rather than opening it. Guidelines have also been produced to assist schools in the use of the spreadsheet.
Because the annual School Report is targeted at the local community it is important that the report include information on highlights of the year.
The link below will take you to a number of excerpts from 2008 School Reports that illustrate different ways of reporting highlights.
The National Education Agreement (2009) includes a list (Schedule E) of items that must be reported by schools. Nine of the eleven reporting requirements will be addressed by the inclusion of information in Schools Online. No action is required by schools in addressing these requirements.
Schools may include and supplement any of the national reporting requirements or other information provided in Schools Online in their annual School Report.
Two national reporting requirements must be included in the annual School Report. These are: