Using school data to continuously improve and inform diverse decision-making approaches within australian school contexts

In Australia, site-based school management systems have existed since the 1980s with schools held more accountable today than ever before (Fernandes, 2019). Since 2008, Australia has embraced national testing as part of a wider reform effort to bring about further increased accountability in schooling. This has changed the entire discourse around school improvement, drawing focus onto the use of big data at the national level and the transparency of open data available on all Australian schools. This research study has focused on exploring various decision-making processes being currently used within school improvement processes across all sectors of Australian schooling and enquires into the extent to which the practice of data-informed decision-making has been effectively employed, identifying both enablers and disablers.