Preparation of the annual report involves schools reflecting and making assessments of their ongoing progress towards the strategic directions identified in their Strategic Improvement Plan. This includes the results of the school's self-assessment using the department's School Excellence Framework Self-assessment Survey (SEF S-aS).

Schools generate their annual report using the School Planning and Reporting Online (SPaRO) software. The SPaRO software platform is an integrated online process that schools use to efficiently plan, self-assess and report. SPaRO is available on the department's staff portal.

SPaRO system requirements

SPaRO requires the use of a browser such as Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari or Internet Explorer 11. Schools should ensure that they are using the department's Standard Operating Environment (SOE). Schools that do not have the latest operating system and associated software are advised to use the department's software catalogue to bring their machine/s into line with department standards. Schools should contact their field services IT team or EDConnect for assistance.

What do I need to do?

Schools are required to review, complete and publish their annual report in SPaRO. Each school's annual report will be available in SPaRO in Term 1 Week 5.

To finalise the annual report, principals complete:

• the annual SEF S-aS
• an annual evaluation of planned initiatives and the degree of achievement towards annual progress measures
• an annual evaluation of the planned allocation of resources and the impact of needs-based funding
• post-school destinations table (secondary schools only)
• parent/caregiver, student, teacher satisfaction (all schools).

Schools may include optional commentary or analysis and images in the annual report to provide context for and explanation of the auto-populated data.

Schools that participated in EV in 2021 have completed a SEF S-aS as part of the process. They are not required to resubmit an additional survey and can choose:

• option 1 - no action
• option 2 - resubmit validated EV SEF S-aS
• option 3 - create a new SEF S-aS to complete and submit.

Note: the most recently submitted survey will be used to populate the annual report.

Levels of access in SPaRO

Principals are able to assign 3 different levels of access to SPaRO through the access management utility (AMU):

1. principal - editing and publishing rights
2. contributor - editing rights
3. staff - read-only rights.

Access rights are not cumulative and a single level of access should be assigned per user.

Directors, Educational Leadership (DELs) will have read-only access to schools in their network. The DEL will engage in regular professional conversations with the principal and monitor the annual reporting processes for compliance with legislative and policy requirements.

Publishing the annual report

For schools using the School Website Service, the annual report, once published in SPaRO, will be loaded to the school's webpage within 24 hours under the 'School Planning and Reporting' tab. It is important that schools do not remove the 'School Planning and Reporting' page from their SWS hosted website.

Schools with websites not supported by SWS, for example, 'Pario' and locally hosted internet pages, are required to download a copy of the annual report from the published folder in SPaRO and manually load it to their school website.