Opinion
Why selective schools are missing the mark
Millie Muroi
Business ReporterI was the type of kid who hated homework, rarely practised piano and often skipped holiday tutoring programs. Based on discipline, it was a miracle I made it into a selective school. But I did.
These public high schools are meant to cater to “gifted” students who sit an academic test in year 6. But the way selective schools choose their students is not optimal.
There is very strong competition for selective school places.Credit: Janie Barrett
While I was a straight-A, “pick me” kid who quietly revelled in finishing my worksheets before everyone else did (insufferable, I know), there’s no doubt I got a boost from the work my parents put in when it came to the entrance exam. They never pushed me, but they paid for exam preparation and practice tests.
Next week will be two years since the NSW government announced what was supposed to be a major overhaul of the selective school system. But recent numbers show there’s still work to do.
The unfortunate fact is that selective schools tend to “select” advantage. In 2016, nearly three-quarters of students in NSW’s fully selective schools came from the highest quarter of socio-educational advantage (SEA): a measure based on factors such as parents’ occupation and education. Only 2 per cent came from the lowest SEA quarter.
A lot of this boils down to well-documented links between socioeconomic status and educational outcomes. Socioeconomic disadvantage is consistently and strongly associated with weaker academic outcomes: exactly what selective schools test for. But it’s not really fair – especially if we want students to have equal access to educational opportunities.
Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are not only less likely to have access to resources such as private tutoring, but they also often face other challenges: going to school hungry, caring for siblings from a young age, or navigating a difficult home environment.
Come exam day, some children are going in well rested, with hundreds of hours of tutoring and a full stomach. Others are not.
The NSW government’s 2022 decision to reserve up to 20 per cent of places at the state’s selective schools and gifted classes for disadvantaged students was an important step. It meant that students from disadvantaged groups would be eligible for one of roughly 800 places if they performed within 10 per cent of the minimum requirements accepted from a general applicant.
This year, 215 disadvantaged students received a first-round offer under this system, and 182 accepted; 104 were from a low socioeconomic background.
A good start. But it leaves much to be desired. There are roughly 4200 places in selective high schools across NSW, meaning disadvantaged students comprised about 5 per cent of the total cohort, despite the change.
Are disadvantaged students just not “gifted” enough? Unlikely. The problem is in how we identify “giftedness”.
One barrier is the need to apply for the test. For many disadvantaged families, applications may not be on their radar. The easiest way to ensure disadvantaged students don’t miss out is to conduct targeted outreach to these families to raise awareness, or better, to make the test compulsory for all year 6 students to complete during school hours.
There’s also a difference between identifying those who are highly skilled, and those who have high potential but haven’t had the chance to practise those skills yet.
While newer categories such as “thinking skills” in NSW selective school tests are meant to be “uncoachable”, there’s no doubt they favour those with the time and money to prepare. We should think about making questions less predictable, and therefore trickier to prepare for.
But why does all this matter? After all, recent research found the benefits of attending a selective school are “very minimal”. First, that research compared outcomes for selective school students with non-selective “neighbours” who had similar characteristics, including socioeconomic status. We know fully selective schools tend to have bigger proportions of higher socioeconomic status students, at about 89 per cent. While there would have been some disadvantaged students in the sample, the results weren’t separated out by socioeconomic status, making it difficult to draw conclusions on the impact that selective schooling may have had for those students.
A gifted student from a high socioeconomic family is more likely to live in the catchment area for a relatively high-performing non-selective public school or be able to attend a prestigious private school education and access private tutoring, if they do not get into a selective school. For a gifted student from a low socioeconomic family, selective school admission might be one of the limited ways they can get access to a high-performing school.
We also know that the overall socioeconomic status of a school – which tends to be higher for selective schools – is a strong predictor of a student’s academic performance. This is particularly impactful for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
As thousands of students gear up for their selective school results across the country, it’s worth thinking about how we can give disadvantaged children a fairer go. Right now, we’re failing them.
Millie Muroi is a business reporter.
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