My School website should come with a health warning

The Federal Government’s damaging and misleading My School website will be used to unfairly condemn schools and doesn’t give parents the full picture, the AEU warns today.

AEU Victorian branch president Mary Bluett said the figures publicised on the website would be used to wrongly judge schools, teachers and students.

"The website talks down schools whose only real crime is to be on the receiving end of a decades-long lack of funding from the government - schools who are doing a fantastic job but, because of the nature of their student intake, face greater difficulties," she said.

Principals were given access to their school's information on the My School website yesterday, just one day before the site went live, and were given no opportunity to make corrections or edits to their profile. Nor could they access the data directly comparing their school with others.

To make matters worse, many principals couldn't access the website yesterday at all, as it experienced similar technical glitches to today, when the site crashed.

Ms Bluett described the timing of the website's launch as "blatantly political".

"How is the website informing parents about choices for their children's schools when they have already chosen for this year?" she said.

The Federal Government has said the website will identify underperforming schools so that they can be assisted. But nowhere has Minister Gillard explained how this "assistance" would be enacted.

"The profession is quite cynical about this aspect," said Ms Bluett. "Governments have had data about underperforming schools for decades now - why haven't they put the resources in already?"

Ms Bluett said the AEU still hopes to avoid taking action against the Government's Naplan testing, dependent on its willingness to communicate.

"All we would need is for the Deputy Prime Minister to sit down and listen not only to the AEU, but to school councils, principals and the experts - to not listen is just plain arrogant," Ms Bluett said.