By Alex Crowe
Students at Melbourne’s select-entry public schools perform better in VCE than many of their peers at high-fee-paying schools, but the merit of separate schools for gifted students is still debated.
Proponents of selective schools point to social and developmental benefits for gifted students, while critics dispute whether the students’ outcomes would be any different at a non-selective school.
Researchers also point to a “brain drain” effect of taking smart kids out of mainstream schools and a lack of evidence of improved outcomes, including employment opportunities and happiness.
Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School, Melbourne High School, Nossal High School and Suzanne Cory High School collectively enroll about 1000 year 9 students annually.
Students are selected based on their performance in a four-hour exam that tests reading, maths, problem-solving and writing skills.
Selective school principals can accept some applicants based on criteria other than exam results, factoring in twins, sibling relationships, and gender.
Raymond Ng’s son, Joshua, completed year 8 at an independent school and graduated from Melbourne High School in 2021.
Joshua sat a mock exam under exam conditions in the lead-up to the entry test after less than a term of maths tutoring.
Ng said his advice to parents considering sending their kids to sit the exam was to consider the school’s suitability for their child, beyond what it offered academically.
“A lot of parents think that if they can get into the selective school their child automatically gets high ATAR scores, which is just not true,” he said.
“They’ve got to do the work and they’ve got to be able to keep up. If they’re spending all their time in intensive tutoring [in order to be there] they’re missing out on the best part of the school.”
Thousands of students are expected to apply from next month to sit the entrance exam in June for enrolment in 2026.
Some parents pay up to $6000 for test preparation for selective schools, in the hopes of avoiding fees at similarly high-performing private schools in their areas.
Melbourne Grammar School will charge between $44,000 and $49,000 for senior year levels in 2025.
That is despite not performing as well as Mac.Robertson or Melbourne High in VCE last year, and performing only slightly better than Nossal High.
Wesley College, two kilometres from Melbourne High, will charge between $43,000 and $48,000 in 2025. The co-educational school achieved a median VCE study score of 32 in 2024, compared to Melbourne High’s 36.
Victoria University education policy expert Melissa Tham said the evidence is inconsistent on whether attending a select-entry school leads to significant long-term benefits.
Using longitudinal survey data, Tham and her colleagues analysed post-school outcomes, including engagement in education or employment and life satisfaction, by comparing selective school students to non-selective school students of similar background and achievement.
The research found participants who graduated from selective schools reported slightly higher life satisfaction, however, attendance wasn’t associated with significantly better education or employment outcomes compared to those who attended non-selective schools.
Tham said more work should be done to explore the supposed benefits of selective schools in the Australian context.
“They are publicly funded schools and so there needs to be transparency around their relative performance,” she said.
“Tens of thousands of students sit the entrance exams each year, and so we need to build up the evidence base.”
In addition to Melbourne’s select-entry schools, there are a number of programs in Victoria for gifted and talented students.
John Monash Science School is a government-funded selective school for students who excel in science, mathematics and technology, and the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School selects students based on their ability in dance, music, theatre and visual arts.
The Centre for Higher Education Studies, which opened in South Yarra in 2024, focuses on advanced-level subjects for high-achieving senior students.
And within mainstream government schools, students can be selected to take part in high-ability programs, which are also not without their critics.
Australian Catholic University developmental science researcher Philip Parker said selectivity in schools gives students a warped sense of their academic ability.
The selective school students have a diminished sense of their ability because they’re comparing themselves with their gifted classmates, and kids in mainstream schools have an inflated sense of achievement because the highest-performing students are attending selective schools, Parker says.
“Self-belief is really the critical thing, along with qualifications, in determining what different life trajectories you might take,” Parker said.
“If their self-belief is warped in a way – if they’re given information that isn’t accurate – then they may choose options that are not best for them or are not making full use of it.”
Parker said gifted kids benefit from diversity in the classroom by “learning what it is to be a citizen” and being able to share their knowledge.
“Being the tutor helps those kids deeply embed understanding of the topic,” he said.
Non-selective public schools are underrepresented in the top performers for VCE, with none making the top 15 list in the last five years.
McKinnon Secondary College performed better than any non-selective government school in 2024, achieving a median VCE study score of 33, compared to the top-performing private school’s 37.
Mac.Robertson has outperformed the other selective schools for VCE each year in the last five years, except for 2022, when it dropped slightly behind Melbourne High.
The girls’ school accepts 300 year 9 students each year, and a handful in both year 11 and 12, depending on retention rates.
Acting principal Samuel Crocket said the school prioritises growth over performance, and teaching practices are based on educational research for students within a select-entry context.
“It’s that sense of the ‘iron sharpening the iron’: similarly like-minded, high-achieving students working together in a really collaborative environment,” he said.
“We drill down into specific strategies to help students harness what neuroscience tells us about how learning takes place effectively.”
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