Julia Gillard has urged parents concerned about standards being achieved in their children’s schools to confront principals and respectfully press for improvements.
Mesures of socio-economic disadvantage of schools are being sharpened to include each school’s financial resources.The extra data will give prinipals greater ability to identify poorly perfomring teachers information they will have greater ability to act upon when the governmnment delivers promised increases in autonomy.
The My School website gives parents the ability to assess the performance of their schools relative to similar schools and to those within their neighbourhood.
In December more information will be added inclduing the financial resources of schools expressed as a dollar amount per student.
Ms Gillard said the site would empower parents to become more involved in their children’s education. “You have a look you form a view and you should go down and talk to the principal” Ms Gillard said. “You should go down and talk in the various consultative forums that schools have about what this means for your school and what’s going to happen next. Obviously they should be respectful conversations but the principals want parents engaged with education.”
Schools Minister Peter Garrett said the MySchool website would be “a welcome tool” for principals. It would also provide “a better context” for the government’s review of school funding.