| Absent | Students unable to do the test because they were not at school on the day of the test for some acceptable reason (e.g. illness) are regarded as absent. They are not awarded a score for the test or tests that were missed. |
| ASbA | Australian School-based Apprenticeships (ASbA) is a national term for arrangements which allow students to undertake a part-time apprenticeship or traineeship while still at school. Students can combine paid part-time employment with training towards a nationally accredited Vocational Education and Training (VET) qualification under the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) and other school studies. Depending on their pattern of study in the senior secondary certificate, students may be eligible for an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR). |
| Australian Government capital expenditure | The amount of capital expenditure funded by the Australian Government. |
| Australian Government recurrent funding | Income sourced from funding provided by the Australian Government for recurrent purposes. |
| Australian schools’ average | Also called the national average, this is the average of all scores of Australian students in each year level for each NAPLAN test domain. |
| Average | In statistics, an average (or mean) of a set of data is a measure of the central tendency, or middle value, of the set. There are a few different statistical measurements that can be used to depict the central tendency of the set. The My School website refers to an average as the middle of a set in two ways:
- In measuring student performance results in a NAPLAN test, the arithmetic mean is used to represent student group averages. NAPLAN result averages are depicted for student year levels, whole schools, and the national student population. The mean is used because the range of individual students’ results is not very large and is fairly evenly spread.
- In using the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) calculation to describe school populations on the website, the average value of all schools’ ICSEA values is set at 1000. This represents the ‘middle ground’ of educational advantage levels among Australian school students. The number 1000 is the median value of the set of all school ICSEA values. The median is used because the ICSEA values of all schools are unevenly spread, reflecting the great diversity of student populations across Australia.
- Where gain is reported on My School, either the mean and the median is able to be selected and shown on the graph. For many schools, only a small number of students can be matched over two years. As a result, the median is provided to enable a more complete observation of student performance over time. (Showing only the mean for a small number of students may skew results and obscure outcomes.)
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| Band | The NAPLAN assessment scale is divided into ten bands, used to report student progress through Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Band 1 is the lowest band and band 10 is the highest band. A band has a high and low range and is not a specific point. |
| Below reporting threshold | A school’s results are not reported when there are fewer than five students with NAPLAN results. This rule is applied for reasons of statistical reliability, as well as to protect the privacy of students in small schools. |
| Capital expenditure | Expenditure incurred by the school, or on behalf of a school by the school system (where appropriate), to buy or improve assets such as equipment, property or buildings. |
| Census collection data | Australian Bureau of Statistics data used to generate a school’s ICSEA value. Census collection data represents, on average, 225 households in a census collection district. |
| Combined data | Combined data refers to a combination of direct data (including parent education and parent occupation) and indirect data (census collection data). Combined data are used to calculate ICSEA for a limited number of schools in special circumstances where consideration of both direct and indirect data was necessary to determine an appropriate value. These schools may include schools in very remote locations where both student enrolment data and census collection data are not reliable. |
| Combined school | A combined school is one that has classes from both primary and secondary year levels. |
| Confidence interval | The figures reported on the My School website can be subject to different kinds of error, including measurement and sampling error. The possible size of that error is estimated and used to create a confidence interval around many of the figures. That confidence interval indicates a range that is likely to capture the true value of the figure (i.e. if there were no error), to a specific level of confidence. Unless otherwise specified, that level of confidence is 90%. In other words, one can be 90% confident that the error-free figure would fall within the range of the confidence interval. |
| Course enrolment | A student undertaking an Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) VET qualification or course in the reported year. |
| Deductions | Income used to invest in capital infrastructure to improve school facilities and is not available to fund recurrent expenditure. It is deducted from total gross income to arrive at net recurrent income. |
| Domain | The five learning areas tested in NAPLAN are Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation, and Numeracy. These are called test domains. |
| Exempt | Students with severe intellectual or functional disabilities or students from a non-English speaking background who have been learning English in Australia for less than one year are eligible for exemption from NAPLAN testing. However, this is not automatic and parents may choose for their child to participate. Exempted students are not included when calculating the average score for a school. |
| Fees, charges and parent contributions | Income received from parents for the delivery of education services to students. |
| Full-time equivalent enrolments | A full-time student is one who undertakes the prescribed workload for a full-time student of that year level. This may vary between States and Territories and between year levels. A full-time enrolment is counted as 1 full-time equivalent (FTE) enrolment. A part-time enrolment is represented as a proportion of the full-time enrolment. For example, a half-time enrolment is 0.5 FTE. |
| Full-time equivalent enrolments relating to recurrent income and capital expenditure | This number is derived from the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) enrolments reported in the financial data. This number may be different to the number of FTE enrolments shown on the school profile page for some schools where, for example, the financial data include funding for pre-school students who are not included in the student enrolment number. |
| Full-time equivalent staff | A full-time equivalent (FTE) staff count is a representation that measures the total level of staff resources used, where full-time staff are counted as 1.0 and part-time staff are represented as a proportion of the full-time load. For example, a staff member who teaches half-time is counted as 0.5 FTE. FTE figures are presented for teaching and for non-teaching staff. |
| Gain | Gain refers to the difference in students’ achievement levels between two testing years. The gain graphs on My School compare students’ NAPLAN results in 2010 or 2011 with their NAPLAN result in the same test domain in 2008 or 2009. |
| Government sector | The government sector includes schools which are operated by the relevant State or Territory government. For the My School website, Australia's schools are divided into two sectors: government and non-government. |
| Income allocated to current capital projects | The amount of gross income received by the school that has been spent on capital projects in the current year being reported. |
| Income allocated to debt servicing (including principal repayments and interest on loans) | The amount of gross income that has been allocated to service capital loans. |
| Income allocated to future capital projects and diocesan capital funds | The amount of gross income received by the school that has been allocated to a future capital project. |
| Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) | The Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) is a scale that enables meaningful comparisons to be made across schools. It has been developed specifically for the My School website for the purpose of identifying schools serving similar student populations. The variables used in calculating a value on the ICSEA scale include student-level data on the occupation and education level of parents/carers, and/or socio-economic characteristics of the areas where students live, whether a school is in a metropolitan, regional or remote area, proportion of students from a language background other than English, as well as the proportion of Indigenous students enrolled at the school. ICSEA should be interpreted with the assistance of the About ICSEA Fact Sheet, the Guide to understanding ICSEA, the 2010 ICSEA Generation Report and relevant FAQs, provided on the My School website under ‘More information.’
- Census collection data
Australian Bureau of Statistics data used to generate a school’s ICSEA value. Census collection data represents, on average, 225 households in a census collection district. - Combined data
Combined data refers to a combination of direct data (including parent education and parent occupation) and indirect data (census collection data). Combined data are used to calculate ICSEA for a limited number of schools in special circumstances where consideration of both direct and indirect data was necessary to determine an appropriate value. These schools may include schools in very remote locations where both student enrolment data and census collection data are not reliable. - Parent information
Parent information refers to the occupation, school education, and non-school education data provided by parents to schools. These data are used as the basis for the methodology of calculating a school’s ICSEA value in 2011. This information is usually collected at the school level when parents enrol their child at a school. - Special circumstances
Due to special circumstances, the school was unable to collect relevant information before the release of My School.
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| Indigenous students | Indigenous students identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, recognised as the first peoples of Australia. |
| Industry area | Broad field of education as per the Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED). |
| LBOTE | A student is identified as having a language background other than English (LBOTE) if either the student, or the student’s parents or carers, speaks a language other than English at home. The LBOTE percentage reported on the My School website reports those LBOTE students who sat NAPLAN tests in the selected calendar year. |
| Local schools | Local schools are schools that are located within 80 kilometres of the selected school. Up to 20 schools are listed by distance, with those nearest to the selected school listed first. Schools that are in remote or very remote locations may have fewer local schools.
Distances between schools are calculated by determining the geographic location of each school, in terms of its latitude and longitude, on the basis of its address. 'Nearest' schools can be identified from their latitude and longitude information. The actual distance between schools is calculated by a formula determining the distance between two geographic points.
Consequently, distances between schools are calculated 'as the crow flies', and are not based on distance by road. |
| Location | Location refers to the region where the school is situated. On My School, the four possible locations are metropolitan, provincial, remote and very remote. The locations on My School are determined according to the Schools Geographic Location Classification Scheme of the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA). |
| Margin of error | No test is able to perfectly measure a student’s level of achievement. There will always be a margin of error surrounding a school’s average score. |
| Matched students | Matched students are those students who could be identified as having sat the 2008 and 2010 or 2009 and 2011 NAPLAN tests at the same school and have results at two year levels. Not all students who sat for the 2008 or 2009 NAPLAN tests could be identified in 2010 or 2011, because student-identifying information changes from year to year. |
| NAPLAN | NAPLAN is the acronym for the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy. NAPLAN is a series of common literacy and numeracy tests conducted annually across Australia for all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. For more information on NAPLAN, see www.naplan.edu.au . |
| NAPLAN average | Average NAPLAN score of students in Australia per year level and test domain. |
| Net recurrent income | The amount of income received by a school from the Australian Government and State and Territory governments, from fees, charges, parent contributions and other private sources available for recurrent purposes. |
| New school loans | The amount of capital expenditure funded by capital loan drawdowns in the current year being reported. |
| Non-teaching staff | A member of the school who supports the school by providing educational services but does not directly teach students. Non-teaching staff can be engaged at one or more schools and include specialist support staff such as counsellors, teachers’ aides and assistants, administrative and clerical staff, and building operations, general maintenance and other service staff. For government schools, this information is provided by the school State or Territory jurisdiction, so the number on My School may only provide numbers of staff employed by the jurisdiction. |
| Non-government sector | For the My School website, Australia's schools are divided into two sectors: government and non-government. Non-government schools operate under the authority of State or Territory governments but are not operated by government education departments. Non-government schools may operate as individual schools, in small groups or as a system such as those coordinated by Catholic Education Commissions in each State and Territory. |
| Other [capital expenditure] | The amount of capital expenditure funded through other private sources including retained earnings from previous years. |
| Other private sources | Income received from other sources—donations, interest on bank accounts, profits on trading activities and profits from sale of assets. It includes some private income received for capital purposes, and from school and community fund-raising activities. |
| Parent information | Parent information refers to the occupation, school education, and non-school education data provided by parents to schools. These data are used as the basis for the new methodology of calculating a school’s ICSEA value. This information is usually collected at the school level when parents enrol their child at a school. |
| Per student income | Per student income figures divide the relevant income figure by those school student numbers provided by the school as at the time of the school census (July/August). |
| Post-school destinations | A measure of the main activity of students who finished school. Post-school destinations include graduating year students who gained university placements, engaged in TAFE/vocational study, or commenced employment. On My School, this measure has a large degree of variation between States and Territories and should not be compared outside the State or Territory in which the data are collected. |
| Primary | Primary schools start with pre-Year 1 and finish with Year 6 except in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia where they finish with Year 7. |
| Qualifications completed | An Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) qualification is the result of an accredited complete program of learning that leads to formal certification that a graduate has achieved learning outcomes as described in the AQF. |
| Qualification level | Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) VET qualification level as specified (Diploma or higher, Certificate IV, Certificate III, Certificate II, Certificate I, Other). ‘Other’ includes education not elsewhere classified, statements of attainment not identifiable by level, bridging and enabling courses, plus other courses that do not lead to a qualification under the AQF. (NCVER 2011, Australian vocational education and training statistics: young people in education and training 2010, NCVER Adelaide.) |
| Quarters | The distribution of students into quarters reflects the distribution of socio-educational advantage across the school’s population. It is calculated using the parent background information used to calculate ICSEA for the school.
No ICSEA quarter information is displayed when there is insufficient information in the parent background variables to calculate a quartile distribution. |
| Recurrent income | Income received by the school that is available for expenditure relating to the ongoing operating costs of schools (e.g. teaching and non-teaching staff salaries, school operating costs). |
| School-based apprenticeships and traineeships | Legal and/or contractual arrangements that allow students to undertake a part-time apprenticeship or traineeship while still at school. |
| School comments | Comments are provided by each school and may include information about the school’s teaching programs, student population, values or purpose. These comments are limited to 3000 characters (approximately 450 words). |
| School facts | Information in the ‘School facts’ section is provided by different sources. Government school information is provided by the respective State or Territory Education Departments. For non-government schools, this information is provided by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) from the annual non-government school census. |
| School name | The official name of the school as registered with the registration and accreditation authority in the State or Territory. Note that the school name may differ from the local name of the school. |
| School sector and school system | On the My School website, ‘school sector’ is used to differentiate government and non-government schools. Schools may also belong to a school system (e.g. the government school system in each State and Territory or a Catholic school system in a particular State) or operate independently of any school system. Additional information on the affiliation of non-government schools may be available in the ‘School comments’ provided by the school. |
| School type | On the My School website, schools are categorised as primary, secondary, combined or special. Combined schools offer both primary and secondary education. Special purpose schools cater for students with physical or intellectual disabilities, autism, or social/emotional disturbance, or who are in custody or on remand. |
| Scores | NAPLAN results are reported on My School in scores and bands. The common NAPLAN scale for Years 3 to 9 ranges from 0 to 1000 score points. |
| Secondary | Secondary schools start with Year 7 except in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia where they start with Year 8. |
| Senior secondary outcomes | The measures in this section reflect the following key areas of student achievement:
- awarding of senior secondary certificate
- completion of senior secondary school
- achieving Vocational and Education and Training (VET) units of competency
- undertaking Australian School-based Apprenticeships (ASbA)
- post-school destinations: proportions (by percentage) of graduating year students who gained university placements, engaged in TAFE/vocational study, or commenced employment.
Data on senior secondary outcomes are provided by the members of the Australasian Curriculum, Assessment and Certification Authorities (ACACA). It is important to note that the VET outcomes data are not comparable between States and Territories, as ACACA agencies use different conventions to report this data. |
| Senior secondary certificate | The formal senior secondary schooling qualification issued by the Curriculum, Assessment and Certification Authority in the relevant State or Territory. |
| Special circumstances | Due to special circumstances, the school was unable to collect relevant information before the release of My School. |
| Special school | Schools designated as ‘special’ or ‘special purpose’ by their school authority are those that cater for students with physical or intellectual disabilities, autism, or social/emotional disturbance, or who are in custody or on remand. |
| Similar schools | On My School, similar schools are schools serving students from statistically similar backgrounds. Factors used to determine a group of similar schools are the socio-educational backgrounds of the students’ parents, whether the school is remote, the proportion of Indigenous students, the proportion of students from a language background other than English, or a combination of these factors. These factors are used to create an ICSEA value for each school.
A school may have up to 60 similar schools, but it is possible that a school has no similar schools. A school will have similar schools if it has an ICSEA value. Special schools do not have an ICSEA value and therefore do not have similar schools. Senior secondary schools do not have NAPLAN results. However, as some do have an ICSEA value, these schools do have similar schools and are listed on the ‘Similar schools’ page. |
| Standard deviation | Standard deviation is a statistical measure. Standard deviation is defined as the average amount by which scores in a test differ from the overall average score, that is, how ‘spread out’ the results are from the average result. |
| State and Territory Government capital expenditure | The amount of capital expenditure funded by State and Territory Governments. |
| State/Territory Government recurrent funding | Income sourced from funding provided by the State and Territory Government for recurrent purposes. |
| Student attendance rate | The student attendance rate is collected by schools and supplied for an agreed comparative period during the school year.
The student attendance rate is the total (aggregated) attendance rate across year levels 1 to 10 for the relevant school. It refers to the number of actual student days attended during the period as a percentage of the number of possible student days attended during the period. It does not include pre-Year 1 attendance, except in government schools in Victoria. Definitions and the method of collection may vary across states and territories. |
| Student background | Student background information is collected by schools from students' parents or carers via enrolment forms and includes gender, Indigenous status, parent occupation and education level, and language background. |
| Substantially above/below | This term describes the NAPLAN achievement of students at one school compared to the NAPLAN achievement of students from a similar school or nationally. This comparison is measured using standard deviation. Standard deviation is defined as the average amount by which scores in a test differ from the overall average score, that is, how ‘spread out’ the results are from the average result. If the selected school’s mean is above/below the comparison school’s mean by more than half (>0.5) of one standard deviation, the difference is deemed to be substantial for the purposes of the My School website. The terms ‘above’ and ‘below’ represent a difference of between one fifth and one half (between 0.2 and 0.5) of a standard deviation in magnitude. |
| Teaching staff | Teaching staff are staff who spend the majority of their time in contact with students either in classes or on an individual basis, and are responsible for teaching the school curriculum. Teaching staff include principals, deputy principals and senior teachers who have administrative duties. Teachers’ aides and assistants, and specialist support staff are categorised as non-teaching staff. On the My School website, the number of teaching staff is the head count of full-time and part-time teaching staff employed by the school for non-government schools; or for government schools, the number of teaching staff (both full-time and part-time) assigned to the school providing educational services directly to students. For government schools, this information is provided by the school State or Territory jurisdiction, so the number on My School may only provide numbers of staff employed by the jurisdiction. |
| Total capital expenditure | Total expenditure incurred on capital works and services in the current year being reported. |
| Total enrolments | Number of students currently registered to attend a school. This number includes both full-time and part-time enrolments. |
| Total gross income (excluding income from government capital grants) | The amount of recurrent income received by a school from the Australian Government and State and Territory governments, gross income from fees, charges, parent contributions and other private sources. |
| Total net recurrent income | The amount of income received by a school from the Australian Government and State and Territory governments, from fees, charges, parent contributions and other private sources available for recurrent purposes. |
| Vocational Education and Training (VET) | The standardised national training system that provides skills and knowledge for work and potential certification for participants. School students undertaking VET have access to nationally accredited vocational qualifications under the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF). VET courses are delivered to school students by registered training organisations including schools, community colleges, TAFE institutes and private colleges. VET may be provided off-the-job and/or in a workplace environment. Workplace training is a significant part of all apprenticeships and traineeships. |
| Withdrawn | Students withdrawn by their parents from NAPLAN testing. |
| Year range | The years of schooling offered by the school, including the preparatory year and Years 1 to Year 12. The abbreviations used on the My School website for the preparatory year of schooling are consistent with the terms used by each State and Territory. For example, K is kindergarten; P is preparatory. The minimum ages at which children start school vary between jurisdictions and are not reported on the My School website. |
