School reps slam MySchool plan
THE Australian Council of Jewish Schools (ACJS) has joined the chorus of criticism against the Federal Government's recent decision to release schools' financial details online.
THE Australian Council of Jewish Schools (ACJS) has joined the chorus of criticism against the Federal Government’s recent decision to release schools’ financial details online.
“Misleading” and “distorting” are among the accusations levelled at the MySchool website by the ACJS.
Representatives from many of Australia’s independent schools have been scathing of the Government’s inclusion of financial data on MySchool. 
Next year, as well as including information on students’ academic performance, MySchool will list all educational institutions’ financial position. The site was supposed to be launched in December, but difficulties in calculating independent schools’ finances has seen the launch postponed.
Schools’ concerns range from a worry that parents might misunderstand the data and decide they are not getting value for money, to claims the site contains incorrect, and potentially defamatory, information. There is also a lack of explanation as to how the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) — which administers MySchool — is crunching each school’s finances.
Representatives for the ACJS, which represents all of the country’s Jewish schools, are wary of a number of inaccuracies found in the website’s data.
Firstly, it contains the socio-economic ranking number that Jewish schools have railed against for many years. Despite the launch postponement, Schools Minister Peter Garrett said it was not related to this ranking.
A statement from the ACJS re-emphasises that this ranking contains “significant anomalies”, which unfairly tar some Jewish schools as wealthier than they really are. In fact, the anomalies were so significant, it was a Labor Government policy to provide $16 million to rectify these problems.
“ACARA has refused to conduct a review or audit of the [socio-economic ranking] methodology and have refused to correct the anomalies,” the statement said.
The council’s national co-chairs, Justice Stephen Rothman, Daniel Goulburn, Nechama Bendet and Alan Goldstone, listed data from the site they claimed was plain wrong.
“For example, it includes as an income item an amount provided to the [externally administered] Grants Authority, not the school, for administering Federal Government funds. Another example relates to amounts included in recurrent income that cannot be used for [anything] other than capital expenditure. In some instances it has added together amounts used for more than one purpose, the effect of which is to inflate and overstate the amounts and to distort the income levels.”
These errors, plus the lack of transparency in way figures are calculated leave different schools’ incomes completely incomparable, according to the ACJS.
While financial information is not yet available to the public, some schools, although no Jewish ones, have threatened the Government with legal action if it publishes incorrect and misleading information on MySchool.
NAOMI LEVIN
Photo: Peter Haskin/AJN file
comments