Private schools dominate uni offers

PRIVATE schools still dominate university offers in Victoria despite the Gillard government's massive increase in places.  

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PRIVATE schools still dominate university offers in Victoria despite the Gillard government's massive increase in places, with 85 per cent of applicants securing an offer compared with 71 per cent for government schools.

The figures have sparked fresh calls for more support for government schools to boost achievement, amid slow progress on the federal target to increase the university participation of students from poor backgrounds. Such students are concentrated in government schools.

According to an analysis commissioned by the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre released yesterday, while offer rates at government schools have risen strongly from 58 per cent in 2007, rates at private schools have risen even more so from 71 per cent.

While universities are lowering their ATAR entry scores to expand places and boosting support, there are warnings that a reliance on lowering entry scores to boost participation will eventually risk rising drop outs or undermine quality.

"It isn't enough to just open the gate a bit wider," said Richard Teese, director of Melbourne University's Centre for Research on Education Systems.

He said the key to boosting the participation of students from poor backgrounds was improved schooling, especially in the government sector in regional areas and Melbourne's north and west. He said the high offer rate for private schools showed that weak students there were being given a boost by the greater support they get and the pressure put on them to go to university.

Report author Richard James, pro vice chancellor of participation at Melbourne University, said a more equitable schooling system was needed. "The disproportion in opportunity at schools is still the issue," he said.

The proportion of offers to Victorian students from the national bottom quartile of socioeconomic status rose from 13.6 per cent to 14.8 per cent in 2011, but remained well below their population parity of 22 per cent.

The latest national data for 2012 shows that total university offers to low socioeconomic students rose by 5.2 per cent, but that was no more than in line with the overall increase in offers.

Professors James and Teese said the progress was disappointing. Professor James said he doubts the federal government's targets can be meet. The government wants to raise the proportion of low socio-economic undergraduates at university to 20 per cent by 2020, compared with 16.8 per cent in 2011. The rate was 16.5 per cent in 2010.

Overall, since 2007 annual offers of places by Victoria's universities have surged by 42 per cent to 14,000 in 2011 as the federal government has expanded places to the point where universities from this year can offer as many places as they want. Victorian university applicants in 2011 had on average a 76 per cent chance of being offered a place, up from 62 per cent in 2007.

Worryingly the number of indigenous applicants in Victoria has slumped by 27 per cent since 2007 to just 245, compared with a 17 per cent rise in non-indigenous applications. That is just 0.3 per cent of total applications when about 0.7 per cent of Victoria's population is indigenous. But national figures for 2012 show a 14 per cent rise in offers for indigenous students, though the total number was small at 2520.