The My School website provides information that supports national transparency and accountability of Australia’s schools through publication of nationally consistent school-level data. It complements other reporting measures aimed at ensuring schools and school systems are accountable to parents/carers and to the broader community. 

ACARA reports available data on all registered schools in Australia. Some of the data collected is not available for all schools. This includes 'post-school destinations', which is data collected by 4 participating states/territories and is reported on the Senior secondary page.

If you visit the map page for a selected school, you will see that the My School website lists up to 20 government and non-government schools situated closest to the school you selected.

In a city, these schools may be quite close together; in remote and rural areas, schools may be separated by large distances and the list may contain fewer than 20 schools.

My School enables a school’s NAPLAN results to be compared with results for students who have a ‘similar background’. A school’s 'student background' takes account of parental education levels and occupations, the school's geographic location and the Indigenous status of its students.

Key factors in a student’s family background (parents' occupation, school education and non-school education) have an influence on students’ educational outcomes at school and on NAPLAN results.

ACARA has worked with education authorities to develop measures to track student progress over time and to represent this on the My School website.

Student progress information provides a measure of the school’s influence on its student outcomes – the value schools have added to their students’ learning over the years.

Student progress measures show how much the same students at the same school have improved since the previous assessment 2 years before.

These measures present a level playing field for all schools – from selective schools with high-achieving students who are already highly proficient, to schools where students have lower levels of achievement. These schools may be able to demonstrate that their students have made major progress while not necessarily achieving at the highest proficiency levels.

Student progress measures allow us to see and to acknowledge improvement at all levels.

It is important to consider that students generally show greater progress in literacy and numeracy in the earlier years than in the later years of schooling.

Please note: there is no student progress reporting for 2020-2022 following the cancellation of NAPLAN in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is also no student progress reporting for 2021–2023 due to the resetting of the NAPLAN measurement scale and earlier assessment of students in 2023.

Senior secondary school outcomes are reported for:

• senior secondary certificate awarded
• senior secondary school completed
• post-school destinations.

Post-school destination data is available for government and non-government schools in Victoria and Western Australia, and for government schools only in the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland.

A summary of student enrolment numbers in vocational education and training (VET), school-based apprenticeships and traineeships is provided on a school’s ‘VET in schools’ page, where relevant.

Primary schools do not display VET in schools information.

A school’s ‘VET in schools’ page displays the number of course enrolments and qualifications attained by students, sorted by qualification level and industry area.

VET information is provided by certification and accreditation authorities in each state or territory. Please note: a caveat is used if a state or territory differs with how it reports its VET data.

Education ministers have agreed to rules that support meaningful and comparable reporting of school data and responsible use of this information. These rules include:

• protection of individual student privacy
• not publishing comparative data without contextual information
• publication of caveats and explanatory notes to ensure accurate interpretation.

My School helps parents and carers have informed discussions with teachers and schools, to make informed decisions about their child’s education. However, it should not replace visiting schools and speaking to teachers and principals to get an understanding of what each school offers its students. A child’s teacher will have the best insight into their educational progress.

You can find information about every school in Australia. You can find out the number of students at the school, the number of teachers, attendance rates, funding levels and sources, and information on NAPLAN.

Please note: there is no student progress reporting for 2020-2022 following the cancellation of NAPLAN in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is also no student progress reporting for 2021–2023 due to the resetting of the NAPLAN measurement scale and earlier assessment of students in 2023.

You can search for a school by clicking 'Find a school' to search by school name, suburb, school sector (government or non-government), school type (primary, secondary, combined or special) and state/territory.  

The NAPLAN average score for a school is a very good indication of school performance based on the students who were tested in the school. The greater the number of students tested, the greater the accuracy.

For more information, visit NAP test development.

Yes. An expert advisory group is responsible for monitoring the reliability of NAPLAN tests between years. A rigorous process of ‘equating’ the tests is undertaken to ensure comparability.

However, as NAPLAN testing moved from May to March in 2023 and the NAPLAN scale was reset, this means you can’t compare NAPLAN achievement prior to 2023 to that from 2023 onwards.

Please note: there is no student progress reporting for 2020–2022 following the cancellation of NAPLAN in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is also no student progress reporting for 2021-2023 due to the resetting of the NAPLAN measurement scale and earlier assessment of students in 2023.

For more information, visit NAP test development.

Between 2018 and 2022 NAPLAN transitioned from a paper test to an online test. During these transition years My School was updated to indicate if a school did NAPLAN on paper or online.

The NAPLAN online logo and a dotted line on data graphs are included on NAPLAN data screens to show which year a school transitioned to NAPLAN online.

A range of factors provide confidence about the reliability and validity of NAPLAN assessments and results:

• Procedures for NAPLAN testing are set out in NAPLAN National Protocols for Test Administration and test administration manuals to ensure the integrity and consistency of the testing process.
• The tests are constructed using assessment guides and test specifications that show the relationship of the test items to the Australian Curriculum.
• Curriculum and assessment experts from each state and territory, as well as representatives from the non-government sector, review proposed test items to ensure they meet curriculum requirements and jurisdiction or sector-based circumstances.
• The tests are trialled in each state and territory to ensure the items are age-appropriate and measure the curriculum in the intended manner.

For more information, visit NAP test development.

We only show reliable comparisons on My School. If this isn’t possible, we show NAPLAN results in grey which means 'No comparison available'. This may be for one of the following reasons:

1. the cohort has 10 students or fewer.
2. the school's NAPLAN participation rate is below 80% (this rule applies from 2022).

My School enables parents/carers, educators and members of the community to track student performance over time and identify schools that have been successful in achieving significant progress for their students.

Results from matched students are displayed for the selected school on the ‘Student progress’ page. Matched students are those students who participated in the NAPLAN tests at the school in, for example, both 2016 and 2018, or any of the 2-year sequences up to 2019 and 2021. The percentage of the students matched in the school is published below the graph.

Education ministers made the decision to cancel NAPLAN in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As such, the following should be noted:

• There are no NAPLAN results available for 2020.
• There is no student progress reporting for 2020-2022.
• Comparisons in the 2021 report are made between 2021 and 2019, and between 2021 and the base year.

It should also be noted that there is no student progress reporting for 2021-2023 due to the resetting of the NAPLAN measurement scale and earlier assessment of students in 2023.

The results for the selected school on the ‘Student progress’ page show matched students only. NAPLAN results displayed on the 'Student results' page show the average achievement of all students in the school who participated in a particular NAPLAN test.

If there are fewer than 5 matched students in a cohort at a school, no results are reported on the ‘Student progress’ page. Also, some schools may have a year level range that only covers one NAPLAN year of testing (for example, a Years 9–12 secondary college).

For all matched student cohorts from 2012–2014 up to 2019–2021, progress information is reported for NAPLAN tests in reading, writing and numeracy.

Matched students are identified for each test domain and this number can change within a school. For example, a student may have participated in a reading test in both Years 3 and 5 but been absent for the numeracy test in Year 5. For this school, there will be fewer matched students in numeracy than in reading. If the number of matched students falls below 5 for numeracy, this school will have a result reported for reading Year 3–5, but not for numeracy Year 3–5.

Matched students in the selected school are compared with:

• students with the same starting score and similar background
• all Australian students.

These comparisons can be viewed individually or in any combination on the same graph. Different symbols are used for each comparison group. The second diamond for the selected school is coloured. The colour represents the average progress of the selected school when compared to students with the same starting score and similar background.

ACARA has worked with experts from government and non-government education sector jurisdictional authorities and representatives across Australia to improve the measure of student progress. This work introduced a new measure to provide a comparison of progress made by groups of students starting from the same achievement level; that is, all students who had the same starting score in the first of the 2 years.

In 2019, ACARA worked with experts from government and non-government education sector jurisdictional authorities and representatives across Australia to simplify the measure of student progress. This work resulted in the existing 'similar schools' comparison being consolidated with the 'students with same starting score' comparison to make one 'students with the same starting score and similar background' comparison.

In part, this is a statistical artefact (known as ‘regression towards the mean’) whereby if a test score is extreme on its first measurement, it will tend to be closer to the average on the second measurement. But it also reflects the fact that the greatest progress is usually made in the early years. Students who start with high levels of literacy have less opportunity to show progress as measured by NAPLAN test scores than those starting with low levels of literacy.

While NAPLAN tests are constructed so that results in a learning domain can be directly compared across time, a school’s results for any year will always be associated with a degree of uncertainty (consistent with statistical reporting). This uncertainty is represented by confidence intervals around the results. While the midpoint of the diamond represents the best estimate of the average performance of the matched students, the ‘true’ value of average is likely to fall somewhere within these confidence intervals with 90% certainty.

ICSEA, created by ACARA, is a scale that identifies the socio-educational advantage of a school.

Key factors in students’ family backgrounds (parents' occupation, school education and non-school education) have an influence on students' educational outcomes at school. Data on these factors, as well as the Indigenous status of students and geographic location of the school, is used in the calculation of the index. 

ICSEA is set at an average of 1,000 and a standard deviation of 100.

The higher the ICSEA value, the higher the socio-educational advantage.

The lower the value, the lower the socio-educational advantage.

A school’s ICSEA value is shown on each school’s profile page.

For more information on ICSEA, see the Guide to understanding ICSEA values (534 kb).

The results for students with same starting score and similar background on the student progress page have been determined using the selected school’s ICSEA value for the latter of the 2 years. For example, the 2021 ICSEA value is used for comparisons of progress between 2019 and 2021.

It is a measure to help you understand how educationally advantaged your school is. A percentile of 40 means that the school you have selected is more educationally advantaged than 40% of all schools in Australia (and more educationally disadvantaged than 60% of all schools in Australia). 

All parts of the ICSEA model are still used, they are just used in a new way. Instead of comparing a school’s NAPLAN result against the average result of 60 similar schools, it is now benchmarked against the average NAPLAN score of all students with a similar background across the country. Student background is determined using ICSEA data; that is, parental occupation and education (socio-educational advantage, or SEA), Indigeneity and location of the school. 

Results reported on the My School website are subject to different kinds of uncertainty, including variation caused by measurement and sampling error. The level of variation can be estimated and is used to create a confidence interval around the results.

The confidence interval indicates the range in which an error-free result would fall within 90% certainty. In other words, there is only a 10% chance that the error-free results would fall outside the confidence level.

You can access and view technical and statistical information about My School, including information about understanding a school's profile, interpreting school financial information, ICSEA technical reports, information on indicative standard errors and information on financial data reporting. 

State, territory and federal education ministers asked ACARA to report information about each school’s recurrent income and capital expenditure on the My School website.

School financial data provides valuable information about the context of a school and the resources it has available to deliver educational outcomes to students.

Schools have a range of funding sources that vary according to the sector (government or non-government) and, to a lesser extent, the state or territory in which they are located.

Government schools receive state or territory and federal government funding and may generate income through private sources such as fundraising, donations and family contributions through fees. The majority of government school funding comes from the state and territory governments.

Non-government schools’ income is sourced from student fees and income from other private sources, including fundraising, donations, interest on savings, and state and territory as well as federal government funding.

Read more in the Interpreting financial data factsheet (155 kb).

The Australian Education Act 2013 instructs that schools with a low socio-economic status (SES) receive a loading to their funding.

The measure used to identify students from low socio-economic backgrounds is the socio-educational advantage (SEA) component of the index of community socio-educational advantage (ICSEA), calculated by ACARA.

For further information about how the low SES student loading works, refer to the Australian Education Act 2013.

In 2020, ACARA appointed an accounting firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers (for earlier years Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu) to provide accounting expertise and advice regarding the method proposed for collection of, reporting on, and auditing of, school financial data.

Throughout the annual data collection and prior to the publication of finance data on My School each year, state and territory government departments review their data and update these where appropriate. The Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment confirms data collected through the school financial statements reconciles with the non-government schools’ audited financial statements. Further, ACARA applies quality assurance data validation checks on receipt of finance data.