“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.

Check this school: An education success story in Cambodia

By San Chey

O'Chrey primary school is a school in Ochrey Village, Baraing Thleak commune, Phnom Prik district, Battambang province in northwest Cambodia. It was established in 2006 by villagers themselves who decided they must act if they wanted their children to have some formal education. The school was recognized by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport six years later, or in 2012.

Photo courtesy of KIND Cambodia

The structure used to be a storage house for corn, measuring only 6 meters by 5 meters. Its rooms were made of wood and its roof, of Zinc. It stood under a tree, near a farm. It did not have walls. There were two classrooms standing on the community-owned land.

Enrollment continued to increase despite these conditions. For the academic year 2013-2014, there were 175 students. For 2014-2015 , the number could increase to 219. But school principal Mr. Pot Saroeun said there were only three teachers, two of whom are contracted. Worse, one of these two will resign because of the low salary that could not support her living condition.

Check your school

Post by ANSA East Asia and the Pacific.

Taking CMS Public: Accountability & Constructive Engagement

This piece is a slightly edited version of a speech that Executive Director Dondon Parafina delivered during the Checkmyschool.org’s public presentation, held 15 April 2013 in Manila, Philippines.

Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of ANSA East Asia & Pacific, I welcome you to this event, where the Checkmyschool (CMS) team will present to the bigger public the results of its undertakings in the last 12 months. They will share with us the accomplishments and lessons of efforts to advance transparency and social accountability (SAc) in various public schools in the country.

ANSA-EAP is very fortunate to have the opportunity to incubate the CMS initiative since 2010. As a regional platform for SAc networking and learning, it has seen the value of utilizing ICT for transparency and SAc work. There are still very few initiatives of this type and I really hope that the experiences of CMS are providing good lessons to inspire more groups to follow.

Social accountability in action

By Dr. Antonio G.M. La Viña  

This is the seventh and final column in this series (written with the research assistance of my brilliant collaborator Christian Laluna) where we explore the concept of social accountability: what it means, what it entails from its practitioners, and what its potential benefits are to governance, to citizens, the community, and the nation. We have set it as an alternative to mainstream governance, where policy-making, execution, and especially accountability are mainly in the hands of government officials. We have emphasized the democratic, citizen-building character of social accountability. In today’s final column, I will be talking about social accountability in action, using as examples the CheckMySchool.org and Government Watch (G-Watch) initiatives, the former of which was created with the assistance of Affiliated Network for East Asia and the Pacific (ANSA-EAP) and the latter a long-standing program in the Ateneo School of Government

Of all the policy areas of government, there may be no more critical priority than education, as reflected in the weight of the budget given to the Department of Education (DepEd). At the same time, the money and investments in other resources (such as textbooks and educational materials, construction of classrooms) poured into DepEd makes the department one of the most tempting targets for graft and for corrupt activities, as shown in the past by the high-profile “noodle” and “textbook” scams, where government had to pay for overpriced noodles and erroneous textbooks. In Robbed: An Investigation of Corruption in Philippine Education, Yvonne Chua of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism found that corruption was so institutionalized in education policy, both nationally and at the local level, that “payoffs have become the lubricant that makes [DepEd] run smoothly.” It is lamentable that corrupt practices would be necessary just for policies to push forward. Transparency and accountability became the watchwords for DepEd reform.

What G-Watch and CheckMySchool.org have done was to put as much of the responsibilities of transparency and accountability as could be placed into the hands of ordinary yet committed citizens, using established and workable mechanisms and tools. G-Watch covers electoral reform and human rights in its agenda as well, but it is in monitoring the delivery of educational services that the initiative had cut its teeth. Through the Textbook Count Project, for example, and in cooperation with DepEd, G-Watch gave citizen groups the means to monitor the bidding for, and production and delivery of textbooks across the country. With training and tools, diverse groups and peoples such as parents, students, village and church leaders, and Boy and Girl Scout troops were able monitor the cost, quantity, and quality of textbook delivery, and that the bidding and delivery process observed the proper procedures.

Checkmyschool.org: Bridging Online and Offline Efforts for Solutions to Real-life Problems

by DondonParafina

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are potent tools to empower citizens. Checkmyschool.org, a homegrown social accountability mechanism, involves the blended approach of online participation and offline community mobilization to identify and work toward addressing education issues.


Checkmyschool.org (CMS) was envisioned to be more than a web portal; it’s a social accountability monitoring tool—one that counts on the participation of Filipino citizens to address public education issues. To realize this fully, the program counts on community mobilization—which happens offline—as a vital component that runs parallel with the online web portal.