New research looks at whether students perform better at selective entry high schools compared to their state school counterparts
COMPETITION for spots at one of Melbourne’s four selective entry high schools has never been greater, with prospective students undergoing months of private tuition just to sit the entrance exam. But is it worth it? New research compares how well those students perform compared to those at regular state schools.
Education
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NATHIR Alkhlawi knew the examination to get into a selective entry high school would be the toughest he’d encountered as a Year 8 student.
He had three months of tutoring to familiarise himself with the format of the three-hour exam, which would test verbal and numerical reasoning, creative and persuasive written expression, reading comprehension and mathematics.
But he was still amazed at how much competition there was for a spot at one of Victoria’s four top-performing state schools.
“It doesn’t matter how prepared you are, you go, ‘Wow, there are a lot of people about to do the same test.’ But I also found it inspiring.”
Alkhlawi, now 20, estimates half the students in his year at Nossal High School, in Melbourne’s outer east, had tutoring to help them tackle the entrance exam.
Department of Education and Training Victoria figures show 3538 students, 344 more than last year, sat the entrance examination in June for the chance to attend one of Victoria’s four selective entry high schools next year.
About one in four of those students will be offered a place, with about 900 Year 9 enrolment places available at Melbourne High School (boys only); The Mac.Robertson Girls High School (girls only); Nossal High School (co-ed); or Suzanne Cory High School (co-ed).
Now studying a Bachelor of Physiotherapy at Monash University, Alkhlawi said he thrived on Nossal High School’s academic environment.
“I had one friend who was nervous the school would be full of nerds,” he said.
“But when we got there it was completely different.”
He said the benefits went beyond high marks.
“I was able to excel in other areas that I wanted to, like sport and music, and just make really good friends and feel comfortable, which made it easier to succeed.”
To ensure state schools don’t lose all their high-achieving students, the number of students admitted to the four selective schools from any one school must not exceed five per cent.
A small percentage of students are also selected under the Equity Consideration and Principal’s Discretion categories.
Melbourne High School principal Jeremy Ludowyke compared the entrance exam, which tested cognitive ability as well as prior learning, to running 100m in the Olympic Games.
“A bit of training does not go astray, but no amount of coaching is going to make you faster than Usain Bolt,” he said.
“If there isn’t a level of innate academic intellectual ability you are going to struggle with this test.”
Mr Ludowyke said NAPLAN test results were a useful guide to prior learning.
“Our NAPLAN data tells us that all the kids in the school are at least a year-and-a-half to two years ahead of the standard set by the NAPLAN tests,” he said.
He said claims made by coaching colleges were exaggerated.
“Our own research shows there aren’t people getting in on the basis of coaching if they did not have the cognitive ability in the first place,” he said.
Vi Nguyen, who runs the Examsuccess.com.au website, said coaching could help reduce stress on the day of the examination.
“If a child doesn’t do any form of preparation, they’re more likely to panic when they see a whole list of questions that seem totally unfamiliar to them,” she said.
“Additionally, other students would have prepared for the test, so if a student doesn’t prepare at all, it puts them in a position of disadvantage from the start.”
Ms Nguyen said students had not always learnt things at school that could be useful for the test.
“An example is Pythagoras’s theorem, a mathematical equation that helps someone find the length of the slant in a right-angled triangle. According to the Victorian Curriculum, students are taught this in Year 9 but students sit the exam when they’re in Year 8, so there’s a mismatch between what is taught at school and what’s in the exam.”
Ms Nguyen, a graduate of Mac.Robertson Girls High School, said the main advantage of a selective entry high school was being with like-minded peers.
“When you have people around you who are much smarter and more driven than you, you are reminded daily to remain humble and to keep working hard,” she said.
Mr Ludowyke agreed: “There’s a push factor; we see it in the results here, what’s often called value add or gain, the students are really testing their mettle with like peers.”
University of Melbourne research shows selective schools may boost a students’ Australian Tertiary Admission Rank by a couple of points.
But Brendan Houng, who conducted the research as part of a PhD, said there were other factors that could account for that outcome.
“In our study students being highly motivated appears to explain much of the effect on ATAR from attending selective schools after controlling for other factors,” he said.
“The contribution is small compared to the main factors influencing achievement of students’ socio-economic and language background and prior achievement.”
Mr Houng and his supervisor Chris Ryan, at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, tracked the performance of two groups of students who sat entrance exams for selective entry state high schools.
They compared those who accepted their offers to those who missed out or declined the offer to attend a selective school.
Mr Houng said the very small number of applicants who declined offers appeared to perform slightly better on ATAR than selective students with similar scores on the entrance exam.
In 2017, 285 students declined their offer to attend a select entry high school, according to Department of Education data.
“The study suggests that the kind of student who attends selective schools will likely do well regardless of the school that they attend,” he said.
He hoped his research provided parents with better information about selective schools.
“In my personal opinion, perhaps there might be less narrow focus on academic achievement and more to overall personal development,” he said.
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