A former education department head has suggested curbing new selective schools and asking private schools to open their doors to less-advantaged children beyond just sporting scholarships to address an increasing concentration of poorer students in NSW’s public education system.
Michele Bruniges, who led the federal Department of Education for seven years, will use a speech at The Sydney Morning Herald Schools Summit on Wednesday to outline research showing 94 per cent of schools with a high concentration of disadvantage in Australia are public schools. In NSW, the figure is 97 per cent.
Dr Michele Bruniges’ research found public schools educate almost all of the most disadvantaged students.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“The impact of this trend is that it creates a cycle of negative perceptions that undermine the bonds that tie children, their families, and their schools, to their community,” Bruniges will say.
She notes, in some cases, socioeconomic segregation is driven by parents with the financial means who are seeking out private options, while schools with the biggest challenges “get dismissed as bad schools”.
The inequity in the schooling system is incompatible with Australia’s self-image of a fair go, says Bruniges, who will outline a range of measures she says should be considered by policymakers to address the failure.
“We need a broader national discussion … We need to think about how we encourage a trend away from concentrations of disadvantage. This could involve looking at school zoning – challenging the way postcodes concentrate both wealth and disadvantage,” she will say in her address.
“It could involve asking more of schools that receive government funds to open their doors to children from less-advantaged backgrounds – beyond the sporting scholarship.”
Additionally, Bruniges calls for “a default setting for registration of all new schools to be comprehensive, not specialist or selective”.
Current policies which run counter to comprehensive school settings should be grandfathered, Bruniges says. She also calls for common accountability requirements for all schools.
NSW has the most selective schools of any Australian state and, while a recent policy reserves 20 per cent of places for students who are Indigenous, disadvantaged, or who have a disability, they are predominantly filled with students from the highest quartile of socioeconomic advantage.
Bruniges, who started her career as a classroom teacher in south-west Sydney, has taught at Ingleburn High School and St Johns Park High School. She was the director-general of NSW Department of Education between 2011 and 2016 before heading up the federal department.
Her research, conducted with UTS and supported by the Paul Ramsay Foundation, looked at how schooling in Australia is increasingly segregated along socioeconomic lines.
In 2017, about 430,000 Australian students attended a school with a high concentration of disadvantaged students. By 2023, that figure had grown to 555,000 students – an increase of 125,000 students in just six years.
When it comes to changing outcomes, Bruniges says there would not be one specific program that could turn the corner, but pointed to Ashcroft Public School in Sydney’s south-west, which had boosted attendance after partnering with the NSW Council of Social Service.
Students at Ashcroft Public School, which has adopted the Mirrung model’s whole-of-family approach. Credit: James Brickwood
The school’s Mirrung wellbeing hub integrates a wider set of services into the school, with a focus on meeting the various needs of the children, from food and health to extracurricular activities and family support.
Ashcroft Public School principal Poppy Loueizi said that included offering a pediatrician, who comes twice a term, psychologist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, and social worker as part of the program, which launched in 2023.
“In the past, some of our families could not access services critical to their child’s learning and development. By providing therapies, we’re improving student learning outcomes and bridging that gap,” she said.
There are also one-on-one parent support services, food assistance, domestic violence support and parent learning courses such as English classes, computer skills and barista training.
Ashcroft Public principal Poppy Loueizi with students from the school’s student leaders team. Credit: James Brickwood
“Parents now see the school as a safe place where they can come and connect and contribute, opposed to seeing the school as somewhere they’re nervous or can’t share what’s going on for them,” she said.
After learning just 4 per cent of students accessed extracurricular activities after school, Ashcroft Public now offers dance, visual art and music classes, where a talented student might learn to play the guitar.
“These activities give students a sense of purpose. They have things to look forward to. They’re motivated, they’re excited. That sense of belonging has contributed to our improved attendance,” Loueizi said.
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