School data glossary
The terms you will meet on this site and on My School, explained without jargon.
- ACARA
- The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority: the national body that runs NAPLAN, the My School website and the Australian Curriculum, and publishes the school data this site is built on.
- ATAR
- Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, a number from 0 to 99.95 showing a Year 12 student's rank relative to their age cohort, used for university entry in all states except Queensland's older OP system (now replaced by ATAR).
- Catchment / enrolment zone
- The geographic area a government school must accept students from. Also called intake area or local area.
- Combined school
- ACARA's term for a school offering both primary and secondary years, such as a K–12 college.
- FTE
- Full-time equivalent. Two half-time teachers equal 1.0 FTE. Student–teacher ratios on this site use FTE for both students and teachers.
- HSC / VCE / QCE / WACE / SACE / TCE
- The senior secondary certificates awarded at the end of Year 12 in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, WA, SA and Tasmania respectively.
- ICSEA
- Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage: ACARA's measure of a school community's educational advantage based on parents' occupation and education, remoteness and Indigenous enrolment. The median is 1000; most schools fall between 900 and 1100.
- Independent school
- A non-government school that is not part of a Catholic diocesan system. Includes Anglican, grammar, Islamic, Jewish, Lutheran, Steiner, Montessori and non-denominational schools.
- LBOTE
- Language Background Other Than English: the percentage of students who, or whose parents, speak a language other than English at home.
- LGA
- Local Government Area: a council area. Every school page links to its LGA page listing all schools in the council area.
- NAPLAN
- National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy. Tests in reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy sat by all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.
- Opportunity Class (OC)
- In NSW, an academically selective class for Years 5 and 6 hosted within selected government primary schools, entered by test in Year 4.
- Proficiency levels
- Since 2023, NAPLAN results are reported in four levels: Exceeding, Strong, Developing and Needs additional support.
- SA2 / SA3 / SA4
- Australian Bureau of Statistics Statistical Areas, from suburb-sized (SA2) up to large regions (SA4). This site has a page for every SA4 region.
- SEA quarters
- Socio-Educational Advantage quarters. ACARA places every student's family in one of four national quarters; a school's profile shows what percentage of its students fall in each.
- Selective school
- A government school, or stream within one, that admits students by academic test rather than by address.
- Students per teacher
- FTE students divided by FTE teaching staff. A resourcing indicator, not class size, because it counts specialist and support teachers.
- Success Index
- This site's 0–100 score for each school, combining ICSEA, top-quarter share, teacher resourcing, enrolment growth and ICSEA trend as percentiles within school type. See the methodology page.
- Systemic Catholic school
- A Catholic school run by a diocesan Catholic education office, usually with moderate fees, as opposed to an independent Catholic school run by a religious order.
- Year range
- The year levels a school offers, in the state's own terminology: K–6 (NSW), Prep–6 (VIC/QLD), PP–6 (WA), R–7 or R–6 (SA), T–6 (NT), 7–12 and so on.