Unique Student Identifier

National Press Club Address, The Hon. Julia Gillard, MP, 24 February 2010; Media Release, The Hon. Christopher Pyne, MP, 24 February 2010; The Australian, 24 February 2010; Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 2010; The Advertiser, 25 February 2010; The Age, 25 February 2010; The Australian, 25 February 2010; Canberra Times, 25 February 2010;

The Australian Government Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Ms Julia Gillard, has outlined a series of proposed educational reforms in an address to the National Press Club.

Ms Gillard indicated that all Australian students would receive a unique student identifier (USI), which would facilitate to tracking of their academic progress throughout their school and tertiary education.

She indicated that the USI would be administered by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and that it would allow parents ‘and other concerned parties’ to access a database that monitored the performance of students in each of the core Australian curriculum subjects. Ms Gillard also argued that the USI would facilitate the measurement on the My School website of the extent to which schools ‘added value’ to the performance of individual students.

The Shadow Minister for Education, Mr Christopher Pyne, criticised the announcement, arguing that the USI was ‘an unnecessary step’ and that it ‘sounds like more big brother’, while the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Tony Abbott, argued that it represented ‘a national identity card by stealth’.

A representative of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) indicated that the USI would involve strict privacy regulations to ensure that only those who needed to access a child’s information would be able to do so, and that third parties would be unable to identify individual students.

DEEWR indicated that the USI was expected to be introduced after the 2010 National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy tests in May.

 

 

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