Principals' Portal user guide

If this is your first time accessing the My School Principals’ Portal, please request access by completing the Principals' Portal request form.

When you add your school, after the first few letters a list will appear for you to select from:

When you successfully submit your request, you will receive an automated email stating that your request has been received. You will need to wait for portal support to approve your request.

Once portal support approves your access request, you will receive an email stating as such. 

Click the link in the email to create a password. Creating a password follows the same steps as Reset password.

To update your details (including the school you are connected to) you will need to be logged into your Principals’ Portal account and click ‘Modify my details’.

You can update your first name, last name and contact number without this being approved by portal support. Changes to these fields should be loaded instantly upon clicking ‘Submit’.

To change a school, in the ‘Add school’ text field begin typing the name and select from the drop-down list. To remove a school, click the cross next to its name in the ‘My schools’ field. When finished, click ‘Submit’.

Changes to your school are not instant as they must be approved by portal support first. You will be notified by email when your school updates have been approved.

Please note that your email address cannot be changed by you or by portal support because this is the unique identifier for your account. If your email address has changed you will need to request access with your new email address (see Request access).

To preview you My School data you will need to be logged into your Principals’ Portal account and click the ‘Preview school’ button next to the title of your school.

If you have multiple schools in your account you can change the school with the drop-down arrow next to title of your first school.

If your school is incorrect you will need to update your school (see Update your details including school).

If you identify an issue with your school’s data, please email portalsupportenquiries@acara.edu.au or call us on 02 9211 0281 (extension 2).

For security reasons, the site will log out automatically after 15 minutes of inactivity. To avoid losing work, prepare your school comment in a separate document and paste it into the text editor when ready to publish.

After logging in, click the ‘Edit’ icon under School comments currently published on the My School website. Enter your revised school comment in the text box. Tick the confirmation box to verify that you have authority to make the update. Click ‘Submit for publication’.

All new school comments are reviewed by portal support before they are published to My School. You will receive an email when your comment has been approved and published.

Please note:

1. All comments received before the deadline will be published ahead of the My School release.
2. A comment will be rejected if it:

• is longer than 5,000 characters 
• contains information that identifies an individual
• contains content that can be seen as politically incorrect/inappropriate.

You can also update your school website address, location, and (for independent schools) governing body. Click ‘Edit’ under the relevant section, make your changes and click ‘Submit for publication’.

Research conducted by ACARA shows that parents and carers highly value the school profile information on the My School website.

In writing your profile, you should use plain English and avoid jargon and complex sentences.

Your school’s profile information could include:

• the school’s mission, values and focus
• some examples of how student success is supported (bearing in mind the privacy considerations outlined below)
• curriculum strengths, academic achievements, specialist programs, extra-curricular activities, or student involvement in sport, performing arts or community projects
• if relevant, information about religious or educational philosophy
• the role your school plays in the community
• before/after school care
• support programs, if available (including support for First Nations Australian students, students with language background other than English, students with disability)

You could give some examples of new strategies you have employed, for example:

• ‘In 2024, we put in a new strategy to improve numeracy results ...’
• ‘A focus on spelling in Years 3 and 4 has resulted in ...’
• ‘We have introduced a successful reading program for primary school students ...’

Remember any privacy considerations, so don’t name any students or teachers either by their given name or family name or any characteristic that could enable them to be identified by members of the school or local community.

Quality assurance (QA) of school comments should be completed by the school prior to uploading to the Principals’ Portal. You will confirm QA completion on the site by marking a check box on the comment’s editor page. It is the responsibility of school principals to ensure that comments uploaded to the Principals’ Portal have been approved by the relevant authority.

ACARA also undertakes QA checks on school comments, reserving the right to reject text where it exceeds the character limit or identifies students or teachers by name.

The text editor allows basic formatting of comments text, including font style, spaced paragraphs with hard returns and the use of bullet points lists. The text editor page displays both the currently published school comment on My School and a free-text box for entering a new or updated comment.

Please note for security reasons, the website will time out after 15 minutes of inactivity. We suggest you prepare your school comment in a Word document and then paste the text to the school comments text box to submit for publication.

If you experience ongoing issues submitting edited comments for publication, email the comments to the address below and ACARA’s portal support team will submit these comments on your behalf.

School comments may be up to 5,000 characters in length including spaces. The text editor is a basic word processing tool and comments need to be input as ‘plain text’ and hyperlinks will not work in your school profile comment.