My School 2 has been launched and not without some considerable early controversy mainly to do with inaccuracies in the data.

The major issue that I have with the new iteration of My School is that the data are not consistent and suitably validated in any transparent manner. ICSEA scores which changed from the first edition to this mean that it is not possible to compare year on year performance because the basket of ‘similar schools' has changed from My School 1 to My School 2. In addition to that, where previous assessments of student populations were made on ABS data that had been rigorously validated, the new ICSEA scores are based on data that have not been validated in any transparent way. One of the schools that apparently has a similar population profile to TAS (which of course does not include educational context and whole school environment) is the Sydney Distance Education Primary School. It might be pointed out that ‘serving similar student populations' does not equate to similarity of school cohorts.

My School was initially intended to be a site that focussed on education and academic measurement. It has become a political site that is focussed on money and one has to question the figures published when it is clear that many schools dispute their figures and in one case - where the school involved refused to sign off on its figures which ACARA in its wisdom published anyway - My School overstates their recurrent income by $1m and the recurrent income per student by $1000. These are significant errors that throw the accuracy of the whole site into doubt. On the financial side, it is revealing that the chairman of ACARA has indicated that debate might be ignited about how the resources committed to education are spent by the State bureaucracies, "It is not only going to be parents who might be surprised, some principals of government schools might be surprised about how much is being spent on their behalf centrally."

Once again, I can only observe that essentially it is not possible to capture all that it is that makes the school what it is, in a set of numbers. The apparent transparency touted by the minister is in fact an illusion. It is only transparent in that any close scrutiny will see through it.

Christopher Daunt Watney