Data Collections Address Collection

The data that is collected is used to inform Commonwealth school education policy and funding. It helps to ensure funding arrangements for non-government schools are fair, transparent and based on need.

Collection data is used to calculate the school community’s capacity to contribute to the costs of schooling. Following a review of the existing socio-economic status (SES) score methodology by the National School Resourcing Board, the Government will put in place a new, improved methodology to calculate capacity to contribute. For more information about the review and the Government’s response, visit the education websites SES methodology page.

The revised capacity to contribute methodology, based on the income of parents or guardians of students at a non-government school, will be used in school funding calculations from 2020.

For more information about school funding arrangements, please see the Quality Schools fact sheets.

Approved authorities for a school provide the following information to the department, for each eligible student at the school:

• Student residential address
• Student level of education (primary or secondary student)
• Student boarding school status (boarding or a day student)
• Names and residential addresses of students’ parent(s) and/or guardian(s)

In this collection, the department does not collect student names. Schools generate an individual student record number (SRN) to use as a reference for each record. The SRN is an unidentifiable number and is only used for this data collection.

The Collection will be available in SchoolsHUB from 2020. There will be some changes, including:

• a revised format for address fields
  • Address Line 1
  • Address Line 2 (optional)
  • Suburb/City
  • State/Territory
  • Postcode
• a new bulk data upload template
  • an Excel document that includes a macro to convert to XML format
  • suitable for reporting large number of students, for example 10 or more students

Support materials will be made available before the 2020 collection. 

The 2020 Collection will be open from Monday 17 February to Friday 13 March 2020.

The Collection is required by:

• All non-government schools that have a capacity to contribute discount applied to their funding. For more information, please see the Quality Schools factsheets.

The collection is not required by:

• Schools that do not have a capacity to contribute discount applied.
  • Government schools
  • Special schools. A school recognised by the state/territory Minister as a special school. Providing education under special programs or special activities designed for students with disabilities.
  • Special assistance school. A school recognised by the state/territory Minister as a special assistance school. Catering for students with social, emotional or behavioural difficulties.
  • Sole provider schools. A school with an Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) index of more than 5.92 or is in a remote or very remote area. A remote school is a school located more than 25km from another school that provides the same level of education (as defined by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs; MCEETYA).
  • Majority Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools (MATSIS). A school with an ARIA value of more than 10.53 or is in a very remote area (as defined by the MCEETYA).

Students that are eligible for Commonwealth recurrent funding, except distance education students.

These include:

• a full-time or part-time student enrolled for primary or secondary education
• a full-time or part-time student enrolled in the year of schooling before Year 1 (referred to as Year 1 minus 1 or Foundation).
• a student who completes part of their education on campus and part via distance education
• an Australian primary or secondary student who is overseas as part of an exchange program.

Exceptions include:

• a full-time distance education student
• a student enrolled in early childhood education (referred to as Year 1 minus 2).
• a full-fee paying student not in receipt of Commonwealth funding (for example, international students)

The student is a full-time distance education student.

Approved authorities can submit the data using:

• A template for bulk data upload. Suitable for those submitting more than 10 student records. The Data Upload template will be made available in the ‘Downloads’ section before the 2020 collection opens.
• Manual data entry in SchoolsHUB. Suitable for those submitting a very small number of student enrolments and for any unusual circumstances records.