Re your post which included; "... Also according to the My School website "PUBLIC schools in wealthy areas are outperforming most of the nation's most expensive and prestigious private schools in reading and writing ..."
Those of us into assessing the performance of companies & weighing up investment decisions place great store on the concept of 'value added'. Company Boards often market takeover proposals as adding value, synergy etc.
The bottom line in school education is that there are two ways to measure schools performance: 1. absolute achievement - as in Year 12 exam results [ie. sampling]. 2. value added - as in the improvement in performance from the point each individual student started at across all areas of learning.
As a general rule private schools & select entry public schools can boast about how well they do on absolute achievement.
Public schools however make a greater difference to the achievemnets of each student across a wider range of learning areas & can boast about value added.
But which system do you think governments of all persuasions prefer to release to the media, enabling the creation of 'league tables'? Where do you think most pollies send their kids? Why do you think so many private schools & their parents boycott national testing that crudely tracks change in student performance from Year 3 onwards?
A fair dinkum system would track student performance from Preschool to University in ALL areas of learning; instead of just sampling for the pitiful interpretation used to gauge performance on 'literacy' & 'numeracy'.
Our systems of reporting to parents are a smokescreen to obscure the real purpose of private schools; which is the segregation of students.
