“You measure what you treasure”: key lessons from Australia’s My School

by Dondon Parafina

The 3-member Philippine delegation (Ana, Don, Deo)

"You measure what you treasure,” says a co-delegate in the study visit to Australia sponsored by UNESCO and hosted by Australia’s Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).

When it comes to public access to data, you should ask for what matters. No just any data, but something that impacts people’s lives.

In the education sector, it’s the learners who matter the most: whether they are learning or not; whether they are being equipped with the right facilities to learn or not.

In this sense, Australia's open data for education platform, MySchool.edu.au, got it so right. "My School”, which has information about over 10,000 schools in Australia, features students’ growth in reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy based on the result of the National Assessment Program - learning and numeracy (NAPLAN). It’s a nationally administered test for all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. The results are out there for everyone to see. It has students' test performance results, but they are de-identified to protect the students’ privacy.