My School 2.0 gets release date

Minister for School Education Peter Garrett provided a release date in question time today for version two of the Federal Government's public school comparison website, My School.

(Classroom chairs 2 image by Eric James Sarmiento, CC2.0)

According to the minister, Australia will see version two of the My School website officially go live on 4 March with new reporting and comparison features available on Australia's almost 10,000 schools.

New features are set to include an expanded school profile, detailing staff numbers, school type, enrolment data and an extended summary of the school itself, as well as financial data on school funding and income and capital expenditure gathered by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).

My School 2.0 will also boast tougher security to protect the integrity of information displayed. Users will now have to agree to conditions of use before logging onto the site.

ACARA has also implemented an additional wall on the site to prevent automated data-collection tools from trawling the data on the site.

Garrett told the House of Representatives today that version one of the My School had accumulated approximately 34 million hits since its inception in January last year.