Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 396304 |
Registration status: | Community Services (retired), Superseded 04/04/2011 |
Data quality | |
Institutional environment: | In accordance with the requirements of the Schools Assistance (Learning Together – Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act 2004, each jurisdiction and sector must provide a report about student attendance at the school, in a manner that is meaningful and allows ready comparisons to be made between states and territories. The data are collected by the Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce (PMRT) Secretariat located within the Queensland Government Department of Education and Training (QLDDET). PMRT developed a standard process and template for collection of the data from the government, Catholic and independent school sectors. The non-government sector data is compiled by the Australian Government Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). The data are provided to PMRT members for endorsement. The data are approved for publication by the Australian Education Systems Officials Committee (AESOC). |
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Timeliness: | AESOC agreed that student attendance be measured over the first semester. However, due to variance in the systems in place for collecting student attendance data across the sectors and jurisdictions, it is not yet possible to collect the data consistently across Australia in all jurisdictions/sectors. All states and territories, with the exception of South Australia, collected the data over Semester 1, 2007. South Australia collected the data in Term 2, 2007. The non-government sectors agreed to collect the data over a period including the last 20 days in May 2007. Both the Catholic and independent school sectors collected the data during the period 7 May to1 June 2007. Student attendance data was first published in the 2007 National Report on Schooling in Australia (ANR) in January 2009. |
Accessibility: | The data are reported in the ANR, in the chapter on Attendance, Participation and Attainment, and in the Statistical Annex – both published on MCEETYA’s public website. A subset of this information is also reported in the Report on Government Services. The data are reported separately for the government, Catholic and independent school sectors, by male/female and Indigenous/non-Indigenous categories, across Years 1–10 of schooling, and for primary and secondary ungraded students. No additional data are available, i.e. everything that is available is published in the ANR. |
Interpretability: | The raw data are published as percentages in six tables: by sector, male/female and Indigenous/non-Indigenous. Some of this information is also reproduced in the ANR in graphics with accompanying text. The datatables in the Statistical Annex of the ANR are accompanied by Explanatory Notes about the data collection methodology used in each State/Territoryand sector. The 2007 ANR Student attendance data Explanatory Notes are available online at: http://cms.curriculum.edu.au/anr2007/pdfs/2007Stats.pdf MCEETYA’s measure for student attendance is published in the approved Measurement Framework for National Key Performance Measures. |
Relevance: | The data provide an indicative measure of full-time student attendance within each state, territory and for each of the non-government schooling sectors, across Years 1–10. The data are provided by male/female and Indigenous/non-Indigenous categories. Data on socioeconomic status (or equivalent) are not collected. The data are not nationally comparable in their present form due to variability in the collection methodologies used across the schooling sectors. Further information about the different collection methodologies is available in Explanatory Notes for the 2007 student attendance data, published in Statistical Annex of the 2007 ANR: http://cms.curriculum.edu.au/anr2007/pdfs/2007Stats.pdf The data do not provide information about school enrolments. Due to variability in the collection and reporting process, the data are not comparable across states, territories or sectors. National percentages (totals) are not available as the data are not sufficiently robust to be added or averaged. The data in their current form are not suitable for statistical analysis due to inconsistency in collection methodologies. |
Accuracy: | Interim arrangements for collection of the data have been agreed by AESOC until such time as all schooling sectors can collect and report on the data in a nationally consistent and comparable way. Missing data may occur due to small cell sizes, i.e. Indigenous or disaggregated data. Some states do not report ungraded data separately for primary and secondary students.Percentages in each cell are rounded to the nearest whole number. |
Coherence: | PMRT has developed a process that provides a reasonable level of control over the information provided, given that states, territories and non-government schooling sectors use different systems for collecting and reporting the data. The PMRT Secretariat is in the process of collecting the second year of student attendance data, i.e. for 2008. The data for each school year could be reviewed, for each state, territory or sector, against data from the previous year, based on the assumption that the collection methodology had not changed. All schooling sectors are required to move towards greater consistency in collection methodology over the next few years. |
Relational attributes | |
Indicators linked to this Data Quality statement: |