Queensland schools have changed the way they report on student and school performance. These changes ensure:
The Annual Reporting Policy for all Queensland Schools (new window) 156k 
incorporates an easy to use checklist to assist all Queensland schools to implement the annual reporting requirements from 2007.
Schools are required to publish their School Annual Report on the school website, and in at least one other format (e.g. hard copy, newsletter, handbook, noticeboard or sign), which the school can choose.
Schools are required to publish the information outlined in the checklist (with the exception of the Post-school destination information) by 30 June each year. Post-school destination information from the annual Next Step survey will be made available to those schools, which had graduating Year 12 students in the previous year, in September each year. Schools are required to publish this information on the school website by 30 September.
Additional information to assist schools in interpreting and reporting results on their school websites and ensuring the privacy of students from small schools is available in the Policy Guidelines: Annual Reporting by Queensland Schools.
Further assistance is also available via the Schools Reporting Helpline email to: SchoolsReporting@deta.qld.gov.au.
The following guidelines have been developed to assist schools to meet the requirements of the Annual Reporting Policy for all Queensland Schools (new window) 156k .
The specific information that all Queensland schools (state and non-state) are required to publish from 2007 on their school website is outlined in the Annual Reporting Policy for all Queensland Schools (new window) 156k . The policy is set out as a checklist to provide an easy to use guide for schools.
To maintain consistency of reporting across state, Catholic and independent schools, definitions have been agreed by the heads of the three schooling sectors (state, Catholic and independent schools) in relation to measures of student attendance, qualifications and professional development of teachers and staff attendance and teacher retention.
For most components of the policy, schools are expected to publish information by 30 June each year. For schools that had graduating Year 12 students in the previous year, post-school destination information from the annual Next Step survey will be provided to schools in September, and is required to be available on school websites by 30 September each year.
Publication of all information listed in the Annual Reporting Policy for all Queensland Schools (new window) 156k is required to be published on the school's website and via one other format including hard copy, newsletter, school handbook, billboard or sign, which can be decided by the school.
Schools may use their own format to report on this information and may add any additional material. It is not intended for this to be a lengthy document and it is expected that, for most schools, the document would be approximately five to seven pages. The Annual Reporting Policy for all Queensland Schools (new window) 156k represents the minimum information schools are required to publish, and schools are encouraged to continue to report using their current reporting measures.
The following guidelines are provided to assist principals and school governing bodies when reporting student achievement and school performance data. These examples should be considered in conjunction with the privacy and data interpretation issues addressed in Section 2 of these guidelines.
Schools mirror the communities they serve and it is essential that the information reported contributes to a greater understanding the context in which the school operates.
Schools are encouraged to provide a broad range of information to parents and the community. Any education sector specific terminology should be fully explained and the use of jargon is not recommended.
The school context describes the environment in which the school operates, or is likely to operate in the foreseeable future. It is important that all published data can be interpreted by an audience that has been provided with a working knowledge of the school context.
In addition to the descriptive information outlined in the Annual Reporting Policy for all Queensland Schools (new window) 156k , schools may also consider including information about the following:
This section describes information about the qualifications and professional development of teachers employed at your school. Important information about staff attendance and retention is also included.
The following definitions have been agreed across all schooling sectors in Queensland.
Schools will report on the qualifications of classroom teachers and school leaders employed at the school, based on those staff employed at the end of Term 4 each year. Staff qualifications should be recorded at the highest level of attainment, and reported as the percentage of the school workforce in each of the following categories:
Additional reporting (e.g. names and qualifications of individual teachers or staff) is at the school 's discretion.
In this section schools should report on three elements:
(i) The total funds expended on teacher professional development. To prevent duplication of reporting for schools, this figure should be based on items directly associated with enabling participation in professional development as outlined in the Australian Government Quality Teacher Program (AGQTP) (see below).
For Catholic and independent schools this figure will be the same figure reported in the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) Financial Questionnaire (FQ). Education Queensland schools will report the figure obtained from School Management System (SMS).
As with the Australian Government 's Quality Teacher Program (AGQTP) reporting requirements, only expenditure directly associated with enabling participation in a professional development activity, as defined above, may be included in the report. Expenses included in the reported figure of expenditure may include:
(ii) The major professional development initiatives should be described. Details regarding in-kind professional development activities undertaken (e.g. mentoring or peer learning circles) can also be included.
(iii) The percentage (or proportion) of the teaching staff involved in professional development should also be reported.
This percentage will not include unplanned sick leave or emergency leave of more than five days, work-cover related absence, long service leave or planned family leave. The calculations will only include details for permanent and temporary classroom teachers and school leaders (this information will be provided to state schools through updates of the Destination 2010 database).
This figure will report the proportion or percentage of staff that was retained by the school for the entire year (i.e. for 2006) from the end of the previous school year (i.e. 2005). For state schools, the retention rate is calculated as a percentage by dividing the total number of teachers retained (FTE) by the total establishment (FTE) for the school (this information will be provided through updates of the Destination 2010 database).
Retained staff will include staff who have taken leave for sabbatical, leave without pay, long service leave and those that have not substantively separated from the school. Those who have resigned, retired or transferred to another location during the school year (including transfers at level or through promotion) are not included in the group reported as retained teaching staff.
It is important that primary schools report their outcomes in relation to the Years 3, 5 and 7 test results and that secondary schools report their Year 12 outcomes information, Year 9 test results (from 2008) and retention rates. However, it is equally important that schools provide contextual information in relation to these results. There may be many factors affecting these outcomes and schools should take this opportunity to provide a full picture of individual school interests and strengths.
Average student attendance rates to be calculated by identifying the number of full school days attended by all enrolled students divided by the number of school days able to be attended by all enrolled students. Results will be reported as a percentage. The period should be Semester 1 (if calculated by the schooling system) or the last 20 days of May each year (if calculated by an individual school). For state schools, this information is available from the Corporate Data Warehouse.
Results of the reading, writing and numeracy (and spelling from 2009) benchmark results for Years 3, 5 and 7 (and Year 9 from 2009) are required in the format set out in the Annual Reporting Policy for all Queensland Schools (new window) 156k . Sources of data are set out in the policy and schools that do not conduct Years 3, 5 or 7 (and Year 9 from 2009) literacy and numeracy tests are to report this school policy.
Apparent retention rates from Year 8 to Year 12 are required and schools may also report on real retention rates. Additional information related to retention rate reporting is available in Section 2.
Schools are provided with a full set of the Year 12 Outcomes information by the Queensland Studies Authority and are required to report in the format set out in the Queensland Schools Reporting Policy.
Schools are to present information in plain English on their value added in the most appropriate way according to each school 's circumstances. Schools are encouraged to report these results in the context of the previous year 's outcomes. This could include reporting on initiatives and programs that were particularly effective in improving student learning outcomes.
Consider the following:
Schools are encouraged to utilise exiting data on parent, teachers and student satisfaction with the school where it exists.
For schools that had graduating Year 12 students in the previous year, information of the post-school destinations of school leavers is required. This data will be based on the post-school destination information from the current Next Step survey. Information will include background information on how the Next Step survey was conducted, the school response rate to the survey, definitions of main destinations, a summary of findings in relation to main destinations of students and a chart showing main destinations of students.
Please refer to the Next Step web page for further information.
Recommended optional information to be published by 30 June each year
Schools are also encouraged to publish additional information including how computers are used to assist learning (using narrative to describe the strategies), the Year 2 Diagnostic Net results and the school's progress towards its goals for the year.
In addition, schools may consider the following:
The following information is provided to manage privacy considerations for the publication of student achievement and school performance data.
The fundamental principle for reporting performance information is to support school improvement throughout Queensland and to provide a profile of all schools to the community. While the reporting initiative is a valuable move towards sharing education information, it brings with it responsibilities in the areas of personal information and privacy. The reporting of student achievement information needs to be managed according to appropriate privacy provisions and needs to ensure that publicly available information is accurate and easily interpreted.
There are many Queensland schools that have small enrolment numbers, particularly at individual year levels. For this reason, care needs to be taken not to identify individual students. Care also needs to be taken in the interpretation of information where trends may be volatile. When reporting on small numbers or 'cohorts' of students, an annual variation in enrolment of just one or two students can have a significant effect on data from one year to the next. This is where setting information in context is of prime importance (see also Section 1 of these guidelines).
It is possible to identify individual students both directly and indirectly. Direct disclosure occurs when information about an individual is simply published outright. Indirect disclosure results when individual information can be deduced from small subsets of data either published or not published. This can occur where data are reported for all students in a group, as well as for a large subset of this group leaving only a small subset not reported.
When publishing information on student achievement and school performance:
All published information must:
School principals may decide that it is not possible to report certain data publicly in ways that maintain student privacy or minimise misinterpretation of performance. Where a decision is made not to report specific data for these reasons, a narrative or descriptive comment on student achievement or school performance would meet the requirements of the Schools Reporting checklist.
Before performance information is published it should be reviewed in order to decide how it could be best reported, taking into account factors such as:
The following information is provided to assist secondary school principals to report on retention of students to Year 12.
The completion of Year 12 is recognised as a significant factor in ensuring that all young persons are best placed to enjoy success in their future work and life. To ensure that young Queenslanders have the best possible chances of completing Year 12 or equivalent, substantial legislation changes relating to the Senior Phase of schooling took effect from 2006 under Education and Training Reforms for the Future (ETRF).
One of the nationally accepted measures of the completion of Year 12 is the Year 8 to Year 12 apparent retention rate.
The Year 8 to Year 12 apparent retention rate is defined as the number of full-time students in Year 12 in any given year expressed as the percentage of those students who started secondary school five years previously. This is the information specifically provided by the Department of Education, Training and the Arts.
Comparative information on apparent retention at a national and state level is available through the Australian Bureau of Statistics' publication Schools Australia (Cat. No. 4221.0).
There are a number of considerations required when providing any analysis of apparent retention rate trends particularly at the school level. Apparent retention rates take no account of a range of factors that may be important characteristics of a particular school, such as:
The inclusion of repeating and mature-age students and intra/interstate movements into schools can result in apparent retention rates beyond 100 percent while in small schools, relatively slight changes in enrolment result in large changes in apparent retention rates.
An alternative to apparent retention rates are the "real" or "true" retention rates that track the progress of individual students within a cohort to determine each student's destination. There is no agreed methodology for calculating these rates and therefore no external benchmarks to compare. However, schools could build up their own data over a period of time and generate comparisons based on their own trends. One approach would be to determine the number of Year 12 students in a given year who were enrolled at the school in Year 8 five years previously and express this as a percentage of this Year 8 cohort. This retention rate methodology does not take account of the movement of students into and out of the system in the intervening period, which may be of importance, particularly when school enrolments fluctuate. Each measure has its advantages and disadvantages that must be considered carefully when information on student retention is being presented.
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© The State of Queensland (Department of Education, Training and the Arts) 2005.