The opening of the My School website last Thursday is a bracing reality check. Things that for many years were intuitively felt, and discussed anecdotally among parents and educators, have been quantified beyond doubt.
My School did not publish 'league tables' ranking schools' average NAPLAN (National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy) scores. But newspapers in many states quickly filled the gap. In my city, the Canberra Times published 20 graded lists of NAPLAN results across the ACT's 91 primary and 32 high schools.
Canberra is small enough for readers to recognise and compare the schools which are public, Catholic parochial (mostly administered by the CEO, the Catholic Education Office), and non-Catholic independent schools (NCIS).
Canberra does not have any elite high-fee-paying Catholic schools. The Catholic low-fee parochial system essentially serves most of the Catholic school population.
The public system used to be similarly universal, but over the past 25-odd years there has been rapid growth in the NCIS sector, from two Anglican grammar schools to 11 NCIS primary and nine NCIS secondary schools, including an Islamic school and a few secular community schools.
It is clear from My School data that in the ACT the educational peer-group streaming effects of this bifurcation of the formerly almost universal public secular education system have been statistically significant.
I imagine other states' league tables will show similar general trends, though qualified by two ameliorating factors: a robust tradition of selective public high schools in major state capitals, and a small Catholic high fee-paying elite school sector. Because we have neither of these in Canberra, the differences are clear.
As a parent of children attending Catholic primary and high schools, I have no particular axes to grind, apart from believing in a plural society, in free choice in education, and an interest in the quality and social justice of the education on offer to all Australian schoolchildren.
I cherish the Catholic parochial system, yet feel saddened to see the alternative public system eroding into disparate congeries of religiously affiliated and other NCIS, that seem on the face of it to be taking the academic cream of students, leaving an educationally disadvantaged school population in the public schools sector. For this is what My School-derived league tables suggest, to judge by the Canberra example.
A close look at ACT tables ranking numeracy at year 5 and year 9 reveals that the