Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been accused of compromising teachers by urging disgruntled parents to front them armed with new information published on the Government website, My School.
"We would expect parents to have robust conversations with teachers and principals," Ms Gillard was reported as saying in The Advertiser.
The My School website, which applies to all schools including Catholic and independent, goes live from tomorrow - one day into the new school year, with various information such as school philosophy and student and teacher numbers to attendance rates and academic performance in key areas, the report said.
Teachers are concerned about abusive parents, and that the information will be used to construct league tables, it added.
Executive director of schools in the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta, Greg Whitby, said in a statement that while he welcomes the government's agenda to provide more information for parents and the community about school performance, the introduction of the My School website has polarised the community and distracted educators from the real issues.
"The main concern about the My School website for educators is that the published test data will become the primary indicator of school performance and will enable media outlets, parents and possibly the schools themselves, to draw comparisons between 'good' and 'bad' schools," said Mr Whitby.
"But the data only tells us a fraction of the whole story about how an individual school is really performing and is based on a limited set of measures, taken at a particular point in time."
Parents will be able to compare the performance of their child's school with the nearest 20 schools and the nation's 60 most similar schools when a website goes live on Thursday morning, The Advertiser reported previously.
FULL STORY
All set for first day of My School (The Advertiser)
My School website distracts from the real issues (Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta)
My School website to go live (The Advertiser)