Contact details including emails for all Australian schools for PhD research purposes
Dear Department of Education,
I am a PhD research candidate at UND Australia. I am researching student wellbeing. I would like to contact schools around Australia to see if they would be willing to participate in my research.
I am requesting contact details (Postal address) for each school including school email (for all schools registered in Australia).
Yours faithfully,
E.N
UNCLASSIFIED
Dear E.N
Thank you for your correspondence dated 3 July 2018.
I note that your request, below, seeks access to the contact details of
schools. This department does not hold all of the information you have
requested, and the subject matter of your request is more closely
associated with the functions of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and
Reporting Authority (ACARA).
As such, I am notifying you that I have transferred your freedom of
information request to ACARA pursuant to section 16 of the Freedom of
Information Act 1982.
The relevant email address is [1][ACARA request email].
ACARA will be in contact with you shortly regarding your request.
Kind regards,
Freedom of Information Team
Department of Education and Training
UNCLASSIFIED
Dear E.N
As noted below, your freedom of information request was transferred from
the Department of Education and Training to the Australian Curriculum,
Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) under section 16 of the Freedom
of Information Act 1982. ACARA has asked us to forward the email below to
you, as ACARA are unable to correspond with you directly via the Right to
Know website.
Regards
FOI Team
Department of Education and Training
**
Dear E.N
I refer to your request to the Department of Education and Training (Cth)
(Department) through the Right to Know website. I note that the Department
has responded on 11 July 2018, advising that it has transferred the FOI
request to ACARA.
I note that you have not specifically mentioned Freedom of Information in
your posting. Technically your request does not comply with the
requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) (FOI Act) as an
FOI request. However, in the circumstances, I am treating your request as
an FOI request. Please let me know if this is not what you intended.
I confirm that your request is as follows: “I am requesting contact
details (Postal address) for each school including school email (for all
schools registered in Australia)”.
Prior to processing your FOI request, I provide the following information:
My interpretation of your request
1. ACARA is not in possession of a complete set of all the data fields
that you are requesting. ACARA does not possess postal addresses of
registered schools in Australia.
2. Whilst ACARA does possess email addresses for most schools, ACARA
does not possess this data for all registered schools in Australia.
3. Subject to your feedback, I am interpreting your request as being
for – school name, school email address (if ACARA holds this data) and a
description of whether this is a primary or secondary school.
Whilst ACARA can process your request as a request under the FOI Act the
outcome is unlikely to be favourable to you (for reasons discussed further
below).
ACARA’s data access protocols
4. For the data fields that ACARA holds, ACARA provides access to the
data requested by third parties under the [1]Data Access Protocols – 2015
revision (Protocols).These Protocols have been endorsed by
the [2]Education Council (comprising Australia’s nine (9) education
ministers) and act as a direction to ACARA. ACARA is bound to follow the
directions of the Education Council: s.7(1) of the Australian Curriculum,
Assessment and Reporting Authority Act 2008 (Cth) (ACARA Act).
5. Under the Protocols, different considerations apply, depending on
whether or not each data field is published.
6. Based on my interpretation of your request, ACARA holds some of the
data that you have requested for some Australian schools. This data is
unpublished.
7. I advise that you will need to read the Protocols to ascertain
whether you are eligible to apply for this data. Clause 35 of the
Protocols sets out the categories of Applicants that would be considered.
8. I note that ACARA was successful in an FOI matter before the
Administrative Appeals Tribunal (Tribunal) in [3]Mark R Diamond and Chief
Executive Officer of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting
Authority [2014] AATA 707. The document in that case was the My School
database. Whilst different considerations apply, many of the arguments
that were accepted by the Tribunal in that case are also applicable in
relation to your request. Certainly, strong arguments can be made that to
provide you with unpublished data in contravention of the Protocols would
cause ACARA to breach s.7(1) of the ACARA Act, which would, or could
reasonably be expected to, have a substantial adverse effect on the proper
and efficient conduct of the operations of an agency (one of the
conditional exemptions upheld by the Tribunal in the Diamond case).
Australian Schools List
9. I advise that ACARA publishes a list of schools at
([4]http://asl.acara.edu.au/). This list will partially satisfy your
request. The published data fields on this website comprise: school name,
city, state, postcode, type and sector. I note that the data on the
Australian schools list can be downloaded in different formats.
10. Also, you may find the information on this webpage
([5]http://asl.acara.edu.au/Register/NewCons...) helpful. This webpage
provides information on how you can send requests for data on this website
via software. This could be useful for internet-based applications, as the
data on the Australian Schools List is updated, from time to time.
In light of the above, please let me know by Friday 20 July 2018 whether
you wish to proceed with your FOI request. If I have not heard from you by
this date, I will be treating your FOI request as being withdrawn.
If you have any queries concerning ACARA’s data access program, it is best
to email [6][email address] as the team responding to data
requests manages this email account.
Kind regards
Freedom of Information Team
ACARA
From: Education - FOI
Sent: Wednesday, 11 July 2018 4:00 PM
To: [FOI #4676 email]
Cc: [email address]
Subject: Your FOI request [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
UNCLASSIFIED
Dear E.N
Thank you for your correspondence dated 3 July 2018.
I note that your request, below, seeks access to the contact details of
schools. This department does not hold all of the information you have
requested, and the subject matter of your request is more closely
associated with the functions of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and
Reporting Authority (ACARA).
As such, I am notifying you that I have transferred your freedom of
information request to ACARA pursuant to section 16 of the Freedom of
Information Act 1982.
The relevant email address is [7][ACARA request email].
ACARA will be in contact with you shortly regarding your request.
Kind regards,
Freedom of Information Team
Department of Education and Training
Locutus Sum left an annotation ()
The agency did not actually refuse the request. They just told the applicant not to bother pursuing their request.