Report cards on Victorian schools a first

MIKI PERKINS Every Victorian school will have its performance data published on a new website.

EVERY Victorian school will have its performance data published on a new website, allowing parents to compare information on national testing results, VCE results and student wellbeing with other schools.

The progress reports, the first of their kind in Australia, will provide data about a school's socio-economic profile, student attendance rates and parent satisfaction surveys.

But the data does not include the funding available to schools through fee income or fund-raising revenue, raising concerns they will not offer a true measure of the impact of wealth on school performance.

Education Minister Bronwyn Pike said this was irrelevant in the Government system - where students receive the same amount of money - and that independent schools were required to publish details of their funding in annual reports.

''We are working with the non-government schools about the issues around financial data, and it's my view we should be in a position where those things are comparable,'' Ms Pike said.

Victorian Government school summaries will be available online to school principals from today, and to the public in late November. The Government will release data from private schools in January.

The Government has ruled out grouping schools in terms of high or low-performance, saying it would lead to the creation of crude league tables.

''We don't see that those kind of league tables are particularly helpful because they detract from the main game,'' Ms Pike said. ''We are providing information in a much more sophisticated and meaningful way.''

The online Victorian summaries will be linked to national school ''report cards'' being compiled by the Federal Government, to be released early next year.

Australian Education Union Victorian president Mary Bluett said while there was ''still some nervousness'' about the Victorian school progress reports, they were better than the federal version.

''The concern about the federal attempt is that the data about disadvantage is very different from state to state,'' Ms Bluett said.

She said the Victorian Government should ensure all school assessments included funding provided by government and funding available from other areas.

The federal push to publish raw data has been divisive, with some principals threatening to boycott literacy and numeracy tests after results were used to publish ''league tables''.

Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said while there were inherent differences across jurisdictions, every effort was being made to ensure the collection and reporting of data was consistent.

Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals head Brian Burgess said when the Victorian performance summaries were expanded to include Catholic and private schools, funding was ''part of the mosaic''.

''If you're going to be transparent then let's be transparent, and transparency includes the resource base of the school,'' he said