NSW selective schools’ woke quotas based on race, opportunity ‘terrible idea’

Fixed quotas based on identity politics are never a good idea and its spread into our education system spells bad news, writes Clarissa Bye.

Standing under the cola at the local primary school playground, waiting to pick up the kids, you usually catch up on a lot of the local news.

I remember the burning topic of conversation among the Year 5 mums was which high school our children were trying out for.

It was a shock to discover you needed to start planning that early.

The childrens’ names had to be put down by October to sit the selective schools tests the following March — for entry to high school the year after that.

And I remember my dismay when I discovered some other families had been quietly taking their kids to tutoring schools since Year 2 and were now openly chatting about how that would really get them over the line.

A Sydney student sitting the selective school test. Picture: Marc McCormack.

I felt like I’d missed the boat on getting my children into a good high school.

There was even something called the “Lovely Class” held up at one of the big tutoring schools at Hurstville.

Selective high school test for year six students at a Sydney school. Pic Stephen Cooper

“Lovely” because supposedly the kids liked it so much, the teachers were so nice and friendly and helped them with their homework.

Now NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell has just announced a rejig of the selective schools and Year 5 opportunity class tests called the “Equity Placement Model” to be “fairer”.

The new complicated formula will give five per cent of spots to Aboriginal students, 2.5 per cent to disabled students, 2.5 per cent to rural or remote students and 10 per cent to kids from “low socio-educational groups”.

They must also do the test to a “comparable level to general applicants”.

Students heading to selective North Sydney Boys and North Sydney Girls High schools. Picture: Hollie Adams

Parents won’t know if their child gets the bonus points for socio-economic backgrounds — as it’s done automatically based on “schools that serve communities with high levels of disadvantage”.

The whole idea behind the original selective schools was to nurture “gifted and talented students” of all backgrounds who were not reaching their potential in the usual one-size-fits-all classroom.

A meritocracy.

But the stats show the classes are dominated by children from better-off backgrounds.

Former Education Minister Adrian Piccoli, who ordered the review which led to this change, said at the time that families with the financial resources to pay for tutoring had a “significant advantage” in gaining entry.

Gifted and talented school students should be nurtured from an early age.

But going down the identity politics path of fixed quotas to correct a tutoring problem is a terrible and superficial idea.

Giving extra spots to lower income kids will simply mean other children who score higher, but live in ordinary middle-class suburbs, will miss out.

Instead of improving the tests, or actually fixing the primary schools where these “under-represented groups” come from, the government is going about it the opposite way — dumbing down the system.

This Marxist “equity of outcome” belief in using quotas has also invaded our tertiary education system.

Several universities, including Western Sydney and Macquarie, now give out five extra bonus points to help win a spot based on where you live.

If you live at Campbelltown or Engadine, you’ll get the points for Macquarie University, but Penrith or Carlton students don’t.

Marrickville doesn’t get it but Menangle does.

Western Sydney Uni gives Caringbah students the points but not anyone from Seaforth.

It’s ridiculous.

In the United States, the issue of racial quotas for elite universities like Harvard is about to blow up.

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA where a lawsuit alleges they discriminate against Asian Americans.

On October 31, in a landmark case, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a lawsuit from a group called Students For Fair Admissions, who say racial quotas are basically discriminating against Asian Americans and whites.

These quotas are hidden under affirmative action measures, with bonus points for qualities like “leadership” and “character”.

The lawsuit has given the judges compelling statistical evidence showing an Asian American in the fourth-lowest decile score for entry has virtually no chance of being admitted to Harvard.

Their chance of entry is 0.9 per cent but an African American in that same decile has a higher chance of admission: 12.8 per cent.

Even an Asian American in the top decile of scoring only has a 12.7 chance of getting in.

In its defence, Harvard said it did give “tips” or extra points to those with “the capacity to contribute to racial, ethnic, socio-economic or geographic diversity”. But it also does this for children of alumni and rich donors.

Like that’s a great thing to admit.

And since it receives more than 35,000 applications for 1600 freshman or first year spots, all the students already have strong grades, so it argues it needs other criteria.

Yet Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, equally prestigious universities with massive application numbers, don’t do this.

The US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, which will hear lawsuits on October 31 of race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are discriminatory against Asian-American students. Picture: Daniel Slim

They make you sit very high level tests. For example, the English test asks you to analyse six different pieces of unfamiliar literature and you need to know Latin for the Classics test.

A better alternative is to start early and target underperforming schools, as noted by Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle recently: “The truly affirmative idea is to ensure that minority students are just as prepared for college as anyone else.”

The same applies here.

In sport we have talent scouts and representative grade teams to cultivate promising children from an early age.

The other elephant in the room is culture and the discrimination against Asians.

It’s been said by many of the Asian American community that what has benefited them is cultural — valuing hard work, a high regard for education and a strong integrated family ethos.

Those qualities will create success more than any bureaucratic, heavy-handed postcode lotteries.