[humphdogg]

Originally Posted by Ali -

Interesting articles humphdogg.

Below are some with different views:


Buckingham J
Educare News; n.107 p.16; September 2000

[Extract]
"Private schools achieve better results than public schools. Performance data by school sector are very difficult to obtain. However, it appears that private school students achieve better academic results, on average, than public school students, and are more likely to complete school to Year 12. This effect remains even after taking into account familybackground, including income.

Private school students have better post-school outcomes. Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) revealed that students from private
schools were more likely to have entered higher education from Year 12 and to have participated in higher education by age 19. This remained the case even after controlling for background family variables (Long, Carpenter & Hayden, 1999). The LSAY also found that attendance at a private school tended to reduce the chance of being unemployed after leaving school (Marks & Plemming 1998)."

Other:
Public schools--and private: Which are more efficient?
Teaching - 4 Reasons To Teach In A Private School

Hence, educators have long since been debating this issue. For every paper on side presents, the other counters with an opposing paper.

Putting aside academic papers and media papers, I look back upon my own experiences:
* year 11 Physics teacher commences a class by saying, "So who's going out with who?" and spends the rest of the hour on school gossip;

* year 9 Math teacher could not control the class with paper planes flying everywhere and noise so loud I could hardly hear him;

* Physics and Chemistry was not even offered at the year 12 level due to lack of demand and resources. Since I achieved A's in year 11, they offered to combine year 11 and year 12 classes whereby I would receive 1/2 the tuition time (is that equal time to what other students received around the State? would this even be an option at any private school?)

These are just a few examples. Of course, there were the rare good teachers who were better able to 'manage' the environment. None of the comments I have made (and nor do I presume comments made by others in this thread) applies to every public or private school.

It is not rocket science to conclude that placing an individual in a resource deprived institution with an 'overall' culture where discipline is not duly enforced will NOT perform to his/her maximum potential than if he/she were placed in a more positive and educationally cultivating environment which is MORE widely found in 'most' private schools than in 'most' public schools.

How anyone can deny this is beyond my comprehension.

I'm happy for any student who has performed well at the VCE level, public or private. ALL students are our future leaders. I just get saddened that when an exceptional student at Kealba or Springvale achieves a 96 or 98 ENTER, that they "just" miss out on studying law at their preferred institution and cannot help but wonder 'what if' they were fortunate enough to have attended Haileybury instead?

Anyway, to each their own opinion :-)

By the sounds of it, you went to a worse-than-average public school. From what friends have told me, the public schools they went to did encourage the top students but weren't able to enforce the middle students to be as interested in their studies as they ought to be (the bottom students at private schools are just as bad as those at public schools though, in my opinion, though there are perhaps fewer of them).

I don't think anyone could deny that the classroom of a mediocre public school will be disrupted much more often than that of a good private school, but even decent private schools can have very dud teachers that lead to incredibly unproductive classes. And many private schools are at the same level as your average public school when it comes to final marks (not APS-level schools, obviously, but lower private schools).

Nevertheless, I do agree with you that students who achieve a mark of 96 or 98 at extremely mediocre public schools deserve every bit of acknowledgement for their outstanding achievement. But as to whether their results at university will be as high as someone who got 99.50 or so at a top-notch private school - well, it's too big a call to make. You don't know in the slightest how things might turn out; I have a friend at uni who got 99.70 at a public school and studies his arse off at uni, but doesn't get nearly as good results as someone who got 98 at a good private school. Unis give scholarships to 99.95ers because they've proved themselves so far.