Understanding the ICSEA: Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage

The Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) is a scale that represents levels of educational advantage. A schools assigned value is the average for all students in that particular school.

ICSEA is a measure developed by ACARA (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) to provide a better comparison between school performance — particularly NAPLAN results. Unlike other socio-economic measures of advantage,

ICSEA is a measure of socio-educational advantage and not income or wealth advantage.

How do I interpret a school's ICSEA score?

Every school has an ICSEA value on a scale which has a median of 1000 and a standard deviation of 100. Scores above 1200 (2 standard deviations above) indicate substantial educational advantage, while scores below 800 (two standard deviations below) indicate substantial educational disadvantage.

The distribution of ICSEA scores from 2015 can be seen below:

Distribution of 2015 ICSEA scores: ACARA Guide to understanding ICSEA values

Why does it matter?

In short, ICSEA indicates a lot about how a school will perform on NAPLAN assessments.

ACARA’s 2017 Technical report on ICSEA found that 80% of the variance in school NAPLAN performance can be explained by differences in ICSEA scores. This is consistent with the 2015 report which found that 78% of the variation was explained by ICSEA.

Correlation of 2017 ICSEA school 2017 NAPLAN performance: ACARA ICSEA 2017: Technical Report

This gives evidence to what is intuitive to most — kids from more educated and higher skilled families perform better at school.

How is it calculated?

The ICSEA score for a school is calculated roughly by:
ICSEA = SEA + Remoteness + Percent Indigenous student enrolment

SEA (Socio-Educational Advantage) is calculated at a student level while Remoteness and Indigenous Percentage is calculated at a school level.

The SEA score for a student is calculated based on the answers to 3 questions,

Parent occupation

• Senior management in large business organisation, government administration and defence and qualified professionals
• Other business managers, arts/media/sportspersons and associate professionals
• Tradesmen/women, clerks and skilled office, sales and service staff
• Machine operators, hospitality staff, assistants, labourers and related workers
• Not in paid work in last 12 months

School education level

• Year 12 or equivalent
• Year 11 or equivalent
• Year 10 or equivalent
• Year 9 or equivalent or below

Non-school education level

• Bachelor degree or above
• Advanced diploma/Diploma
• Certificate I to IV (including trade certificate)
• No non-school qualification

These individual student scores are then compiled for each school into a summary like the one below.

For more details check out ACARA’s Guide to Understanding ICSEA Values.