Private Schools

[Rietie]

I go to a private school myself that costs around $14/15,000 a year, excluding compulsory building donations and laptop hiring. I think maybe a private school is worth it for year 7 and above but definitely not in primary school years. My private school has been incredibly beneficial for me as it challenged me and made me work harder instead of just lazing around (I did that in the private school before that, but it was a crappy private school - cost around $3,000 per year).

I think private schools then can be really helpful in motivating slackers and making them do better because of the more competitive environment. But sometimes you can become a bit snobby because of the social environment, and it's also hard when it's not a co-ed private school (like mine). But female private schools can be really helpful for girls as they gain more confidence in subjects such as the sciences and the maths that are usually dominated by males.

Umm...yeh... I may be a bit biased as I've gone to 3 different private schools since year 7, although I did go to a state primary school.

[pariah]

Those fees are nothing compared to those of NSW.
I was surprised Melbourne Grammar(Boys) and Geelong Grammar were not on the list.

I have to somewhat agree (I go to Melbourne Grammar). The thing is, like half our year level (100 boys) are "all the way"; that is, they start in Prep at MGS (which is about 15k a year), and stay at the school for 13 years (except some go to timbertop for a year...). Anyway, out of those who started in prep, only one or two are 'top students' (academically). Virtually all of the top students come in at year 7 (which incidentally, is the year they offer scholarships for) or year 9 (another scholarship intake year).
As for the quality of education, I honestly would say that the quality is not much, if at all, better than a public school. HOWEVER, the intial image of the school makes it a confluence of many bright minds, and therefore, you are surrounded by good students (which I suppose can help bring ur level up). Really, much of the price u pay is for the peers (same with the uni's listed above like Harvard..., which actually has a very generous financial aid program; mean aid is 30k a year off price).
Another aspect of private schools is that they often teach subjects that are esoteric, and very marks-orientated. An example at our school is LATIN (number 1 subject for scaling...45 mean). So many students take it, and the school poaches the top Latin teachers in Victoria, so our scores in this subject are very high. I'm sure very few public schools (and I definitely do not refer to MHS or macrob, coz whilst they are public, they far surpass any other public schools) do any subjects for the sake of marks (out of 200 students a year level..100 do spec, 60 do latin, and next year, once classical greek starts up...i'm sure heaps will do that as well). Still, i'm not complaining - i luv the English faculty...so many 50s! and also...second highest school for 99.95s: we had 3..MLC had 4.

[cara.mel]

(out of 200 students a year level..100 do spec,

Far out, out of ~170 at my one, about 15 people did spec this year. Including 2 year 11s.
I went to local public primary school, private HS. Coming into year 7 it was immediately obvious to me who went to the primary school - they had simply learnt a hell of a lot more, probably had teachers that actually understood maths and didn't pass it over to you to explain things etc. Their advantage didn't last for very long, by the end of year 7 I had caught up to them

I agree that it's probably the community there that makes it better than a public HS, actual quality of education I think I would have done almost as good at VCE anywhere. But in terms of having other people there that I got along with, that I wasn't clearly a huge gap ahead of the rest, that was great. And for learning things in general outside academic. Like, if it hadn't been for school making everyone do a summer/winter sport, I would have missed out on all that and that was definitely worth it, even it was like the junior E team. =P. Oh and getting to learn an instrument in year 7 as well, that rocked. =)

But female private schools can be really helpful for girls as they gain more confidence in subjects such as the sciences and the maths that are usually dominated by males.

In my IS class I was the only girl there, was by far the best subject I did in terms of entertainment value, generally having a good time etc =D. Maybe I'm an exception not a rule but

[pariah]

I think I would have done almost as good at VCE anywhere.

This is very much the case; the top students (i.e. those who are inherently intelligent, those who are very motivated), like urself (evident from score) will always perform very well. However, it is exactly for this reason that those VCE statistics they publish in the paper each year always focus on the median scores. This is quite clearly because a school should be judged on how well it can bring up the middle student, not the talented student (whose score will be high regardless - about all a private school does for a talented student is boosts their ENTER a small amount). Again however, schools can somewhat artificially bring up their median ENTERs by getting students to do subjects for the sake of score, or, alternatively, artificially bring up the median study score by getting students to do predominantly subjects that the school is strong at. If you look at this year stats for example, Macrob and MHS (which have multitudes of talent) dominate at 1 and 2...but the next highest public school is at 27 (and even then, it is a subject selective school, VCA). i think all this rant has done is elucidate exactly how difficult it is to compare public and private schools..lol (pointless!)

[brendan]

(whose score will be high regardless - about all a private school does for a talented student is boosts their ENTER a small amount).

A study done by Australian Council for Educational Research and the Melbourne Institute for Applied Economic and Social Research has found that: "When controlling for socioeconomic background and [Year 9] achievement in literacy and numeracy, the average ENTER score of independent and Catholic school students is 5 and 3 score points above that of government school students."
http://melbourneinstitute.com/conf/prevconf/Papers_presentations/Marks_Gary.pdf

Again however, schools can somewhat artificially bring up their median ENTERs by getting students to do subjects for the sake of score, or, alternatively, artificially bring up the median study score by getting students to do predominantly subjects that the school is strong at.

So what? There is nothing wrong with that.

[cara.mel]

We were talking about people at the very top
My enter wouldn't be 95 if I went to a government school, it'd be like 99.70 or something

[excal]

The public education system would be choked if there wasn't a private alternative, as sad as I am to say this. It's a pity it's not funded any more (and in fact, private schools are funded even more by the Commonwealth Government).

I suppose we need choice, though.

I personally wouldn't send my children to private school...I'd try and get them into my alma mater though

[Fyrefly]

I can vouch for the small difference @ the high-end scale of ENTERs.

My good friend used to go to my low-rung government school with me, before she went on to do bigger and better things first @ Uni High, then @ Macrob for her final year. We were generally of equal intelligence, with the key difference being her strong favouring of sciences and her ESL, while my subjects were a bit more across the board and I did plain English. The difference in our scores? She only beat me by .55 (which, come to think of it, could actually be attributed to the more favourable scaling of her subjects). I certainly believe I saved my money... however, there certainly IS a difference, despite it being a small one. If I were in pursuit of a medicine degree or something more lucrative where every ENTER point counted, then perhaps my views would be different.

When it comes to a middle band student, my witnessing of the experiences of family and friends around me suggest that a stricter school with more dedicated staff can lead to an improvement more substantial than half a point (not necessarily private schools, but many of them seem to be sterotyped as such).

[johd89]

I can vouch for the small difference @ the high-end scale of ENTERs.

My good friend used to go to my low-rung government school with me, before she went on to do bigger and better things first @ Uni High, then @ Macrob for her final year. We were generally of equal intelligence, with the key difference being her strong favouring of sciences and her ESL, while my subjects were a bit more across the board and I did plain English. The difference in our scores? She only beat me by .55 (which, come to think of it, could actually be attributed to the more favourable scaling of her subjects). I certainly believe I saved my money... however, there certainly IS a difference, despite it being a small one. If I were in pursuit of a medicine degree or something more lucrative where every ENTER point counted, then perhaps my views would be different.

When it comes to a middle band student, my witnessing of the experiences of family and friends around me suggest that a stricter school with more dedicated staff can lead to an improvement more substantial than half a point (not necessarily private schools, but many of them seem to be sterotyped as such).

Uni High and Macrob are both government funded schools though.... (?) And it's a fairly limited example, and there's no way to generalise with this information to all public/private sectors.

I agree with some of the views expressed thus far, that it's your choice on whether you'd like your child to attend a private/public school, but the private sector can be extremely expensive, and perhaps overpriced.

Also, a school shouldn't be judged purely on its quality by the median ENTER scores. If you're absolutely miserable where you are, but your school gets fantastic study score averages, then what's the point? A large proportion of school is about your experiences, not just your grades. (Of course, it's important that your school has excellent teaching methods and that they have resources in order to let you reach your full potential.)

[Fyrefly]

Macrob is still selective though; it was purely an example in light of cara.mel's estimations.
Never fear, everyone on this forum is well-aware of the fallacy in assuming the part represents the whole *cough* brendan *cough*

[costargh]

Don't know if anyone has posted this...
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-making-of-a-school/2007/12/18/1197740268972.html

An Opinion piece relating to Public and Private schools (including Catholic schools)

Edit: Changed link

[brendan]

yeah me and nick1989 were discussing that article on irc yesterday. i do educational research, and Chris Wheat's opinion piece is misleading and not supported by hard evidence. i'm disappointed that he would talk such crap, but i'm not surprised. if i ever wanted to give a good example of bullshitting at its finest, Chris Wheat's piece is a prime example.

Here is a good summary of the empirical research evidence:

Professor Bill Louden
Head of School, Graduate School of Education, The University of Western Australia
Title: What makes the most difference - and what would it take to get more of it?
http://melbourneinstitute.com/conf/school/Presentations/Session%202/Louden,%20Bill_161107.pdf

Dr. Ken Rowe, PhD
Principal Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research
Background paper to keynote address presented at the ACER Research Conference 2003
Title: The Importance of Teacher Quality as a Key Determinant of Students’ Experiences and Outcomes of Schooling
http://www.acer.edu.au/documents/Rowe_ACER_Research_Conf_2003_Paper.pdf

[costargh]

Yeh I was actually thinking as I read the article " This guy has basically failed to back up any of his arguments with evidence in any form". It was also very vague at times which was frustrating to try and develop a PoV on the issue.

I'll have a look at those links probably tommorow. Christmas today and just making a quick FSN stop over =)

[brendan]

Dr. Ken Rowe, PhD
Principal Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research
"Making Schools Better Conference" Melbourne Business School, the University of Melbourne 2004
Title: The importance of teaching: Making Better Schools by building teacher capacities that maximise the quality of teaching & learning provision
http://melbourneinstitute.com/conf/prevconf/Papers_presentations/Rowe__Ken_presentation.pdf

[DrowNz]

To me it all comes down to ones attitude and determination. If you want to do well, you will no matter where you're at. And if you don't, well, no Private school will help you.