,Text 1: bespoke education: are Australia’s private schools worth the price
tag?
Research points to individual school culture being more important than if a school is public or
private.
If you want to ruin a dinner party, try lobbing this on the table: are private schools better than public
schools? Or this: are they worth the money? For parents who have the relative luxury of choice in
these matters, the question is a vexed one. Finding the right school for your child is an emotional
decision, clouded by prejudice, guilt and hope, distorted by wealth and peer group and the carefully
curated aura of private school reputations. In a country that still wants to thínk of itself as
egalítarian, evidence of the growing disparity between Australia's richest and poorest schools has
políticised it too.
But parents want to do the best they can for their children, Lured by the ever-more luxurious
facilities of private schools, the smorgasbord of extracurricular activities, the boaters and blazers,
solid feeling of generations of institutional history; some are captive to the idea they are doing
children a disservice by sending them to the more modest local private school. But does any that
make private schools better?
"Independent school offers a much more bespoke education." says Sharon Leifer, who has three
children who’ve attended the same private school, Leifer's oldest son was a quiet kid in class. Very
bright, with dyslexia and dyspraxia, he struggled with handwriting, and had become quite miserabele
at the local public school. But she says the school told her his problems were not "bad enough" to get
him extra help. So the family settled on St Luke's Grammar in Dee Why, a small Anglican co-ed K-12
school that charges fees of up to $24,000 in year 12. “The ambience of the place, the whole thing,
really just caught us and we knew that he would be much happier there, and he has been.
Her oldest, who his mother says was rejected from a selective public school on the basis of his
NAPLAN results, is now studying law at ANU. But for every story like the Leifer family's, there's
another who's gone the other way. Bradley Stringer's family wanted to go private for their two kids.
But they were disappointed with their private inner Sydney primary school. “Our experience of the
teaching staff was not what we had expected for one of our kids, and certainly not what we were
paying for," Stringer says. “That disappointment was compounded by annual fee increases of
between 6% and 15%, with little to no communication to the parents regarding the need for greater
fees." They are much happier with their kids's new public school in Balmain.
Broadly speaking, choosing a school is not a process you can use trial and error on to improve. Most
famílies don't want to move their kids around a lot of different schools. So how do you get a sense of
how good a school is from the outside? University entrance results are one obvious place to start,
and high-fee schools tend to sell hard on their high marks. But if you're only interested in academic
achievement, the results from most of the 30-odd Australian studies since 2000 suggest that private
schools are no better at progressing students' learning than state schools, once you've controlled for
socioeconomic background.
,"On average private schools superficially appear to achieve higher student outcomes" concedes
education researcher and public schools advocate Trevor Cobbold. “But public schools enrol the vast
majority of disadvantaged students and this is what largely accounts for differences in school
outcomes."
The academic excellence of high-fee schools might owe more to a virtuous circle or feedback loop,
rather than anything particularly unique to the school's teaching and learning. Those schools are also
in a position to lure bright students with scholarships. And yet there is also some research to suggest
that public school kids do better at university than private school kids with the same ATAR. The
researchers say this may reflect the ability of some private schools to maximize tertiary entrance
scores for their students, who revert to "underlying ability" once they've left.
But none of it can answer the question for an individual child: is your child going to do better at one
school or another? Don't look to the dismal science for help. Whatever it is, paying high fees for
private school is not an economically rational decision, says Sean Leaver, a behavioral economist
specializing in education choices. He compares it to a luxury consumption decision, like buying a top-
end BMW over a good cheap Toyota. Both will get you there. “As an investment? Clearly no, " he
says.
"There's no real benefit from attending a private school compared to a public school once you take
into account that private schools skim the best kids and screen the worst kids out ."So why are so
many families choosing to pay for private schools? Philip Heath, the principal of Barker College in
Sydney's north--west says it's a discretionary spend; So what's driving that decision? "I reckon there
are probably four key things,"
Heath says. "[The first is] broadly cultural and spiritual allegiances -- that's ethics and values; where
their families are from. The second would be seeking an individualisation of experience - teacher
connection, discipline, access to opportunities, flexibility of the structure to adapt to that child's
interests or needs. Third Would be the ability to influence school policy and practice at a local level
and to participate more in decision making. The fourth one, that's not popular to talk about, would
be aspirations for academic and social engagement, lifelong friendships.
Improperly expressed it would be 'the old school tie', Put more generously, you’re building
friendships that last a long time. Former NSW education minister Adrian Piccolialso a supporter of
school choice, with his own kids in the catholic system. But he says the key difference between
school sectors is the ability of “ the non-government sector to choose who their students are."
Public schools have to take a comers, but through fees, entrance exams, targeted scholarships,
interviews, discretion discipline proceedings, private schools can pick and choose. He believes many
parents make a school decision based on perceptions of student behaviour, or of a school's level of
discipline. The extensive disclosure and reporting requirements about critical incidents or teacher
, dismissals for government schools can impact badly on the public sector's reputation, he says. Public
schools are much more publicly accountable.
Catholic and independent schools don't have to provide that kind of information, and that gives
them in a sense a marketing advantage. Leaver, the economist, says parental choices are typically
driven more by anxiety than reason but it could be a rational choice to go private if your local public
high school is small and does not offer the range of subjects your child wants. "[However], in most
cases you're probably better on buying a house in a suburb with a nice public school than actually
paying the fees to go to a private school," he says.
"It's more of a consumption choice. They're paying for all the extras. The nice facilities, the
segregation effects, the screening out of the 'undesirables'." Are private schools really stricter, better
at instilling discipline or shaping the good character of children? That is certainly conveyed in the
rhetoric and marketing of many private schools. But it might be simply that such schools have easier
raw material to work with - and, as Piccoli pointed out, the fact they can just expel problem kids.
“The idea independent schools might be somehow morally superior - I don't buy that at all," says Dr
Mark Merry, principal of Yarra Valley Grammar in Victoria. "I thínk that parents who choose to send
their children to our school choose to do so subscribing to the values of the school, so we perhaps
don't have the diversity of viewpoints. It's far more - not monocultural but it's more homogeneous.
Independent school advocates argue that the key point to private schools is choice: giving parents
options to fit their own values, faith or beliefs, or their kids' special needs. "There's probably more
differences within the sectors than there would be between them," says Carolyn Bladden, the
principal of the independent, no-fee Warakirri College in Sydney's Fairfield and Blacktown, which
helps disadvantaged young adults finish high school.
Bladden says sprawting grounds and gleaming facilities aren't what makes the difference to a child.
"The most important thing is the relationship between the teachers and the students, and their
engagement. It can happen or not happen within either sector.'
So where are the teachers better? Even those working in the public sector admit underperforming
teachers in public schools are harder to get rid of. Accordingly, principal autonomy in hiring and firing
is a key factor many parents cite for going private, believing they will get better teaching quality as a
result. But the Grattan Institute's Goss says, while the freedom to fire the worst teachers may be
attractive to parents with a business mindset, its importance may be overstated. "No good
international research shows you can lift the system by getting rid of the worst teachers, he says.
"Lots of international research says you can lift outcome at scale by providing appropriate support to
all teachers."
The somewhat maddening conclusion from talking to principals and researchers is that schools
cannot be judged by sector. It is rational meaningless to argue private schools are better. There is too
much diversity between schools, and the research points to individual school cultures being the most
important factor.
