Sydney has a wide range of schools to choose from, parents can
either send their students to Government-public education, or Catholic
education, or private. While looking at the middle class, Rowe and Windle state
“An associated behaviour is competitiveness and feelings of pressure or stress
in securing enrollment in the school with the highest perceived value, merit…”
(Rowe, Windle, p 149). This then puts pressure on parents to enroll their
students into the best available school within their local community.
In regards to my educational experience, I went to a public school
in both my primary and secondary
education, though from my memory all my peers went from public school to
private school in the primary-high school transition. Only a small handful of
my peers carried on into Government education in my area. I am born
and raised in Sydney eastern suburbs, within my area the four main schools my
peers went to were South Sydney High school, Marist College Pagewood,
Matraville sports High school, and Our Lady of Sacred Heart College (OLSH).
According to Myschool the
population of students attending non-government schools is greater than students
who are attending government-schools. With 848 girls attending Our lady of Sacred Heart and 586 students Enrolled at Marist College in 2012. As opposed to Mattraville
Sports High which has 291
enrolments, 102 girls and 189 boys, it is clear that parents are sending
students to non-government higher school educational arenas.
As Rowe stated that parents send their students to the best value,
or merited school, the results however are still similar in the simple achievements
to better education, for example attendance rates were close with South Sydney
achieving 90% and Marist and OLSH achieving 92%/93%. Even the completion
rates of Secondary high school, South Sydney had 124 students complete Secondary
Education, Matraville Sports had 41 students, Marist College had 83 students and OLSH had 128 Students complete secondary
education in 2012. It is clear that the results are both similar and different
in regards to the Government and non-Government schools completing high school
in 2012, especially taking into consideration the total enrollments at each
school.
During a class tutorial, EDST1104, my teacher Sue asked the class
who was public educated and who was private educated. Then she asked who would
send their children to public schools or private schools. It shown that most
private school educated students would send their children to private schools,
and public school students would send their students to public school. I think
an individual’s experience has a big influence on the choice of school for
his/her child.
Emma E Rowe & Joel Windle (2012) The Australian middle
class and education: a small-scale study of the school choice
experience as framed by ‘My School’ within inner city families , DOI:
0.1080/17508487.2012.672327
I agree with you in that the individual experiences of parents has a big influence on their views of education, like their choice of school for their child to attend. While I also attended my local public schools for primary and secondary, many of my primary school classmates that live in western Sydney opted to go to schools well outside of their area, especially to schools such as Hornsby Girls, and Fort Street, over an hour of commute time each way everyday.
ReplyDeleteSchool choice has had an impact on parents from many Australian middle class families. 30 years ago ‘school choice’ in Australia was unheard of, either the local government school was the automatic selection - or if one's family was Catholic, or had attended elite Protestant colleges, tradition and faith took care of the school attended.
However, School Marketization (Kenway, 2001 ) rose in the 1980s and parents and students began to be viewed as both consumers and commodities of the schooling process. Nowadays, parents can 'shop' for their children's education with the aid of the My School website. Some parents even go to the extent of 'prepping' their children to 'sell' to schools using strategies such as enrolling their children into tutoring colleges, starting a church-going habit in order to secure the signature of a priest on an enrolment form, or moving house to access a well regarded government school. While all this seems a little excessive for me, as I believe that private schools do not benefit students hugely, to each their own I guess.