A new study led by research fellow Dr Melissa Tham from Victoria University has investigated the post-school outcomes for students who attended academically selective schools.

The study drew on life satisfaction, employment and education measures to explore whether children at academically selective schools fare better than their counterparts in the long run. 

No major benefits for selective school alumni were identified. 

“The only significant result that we got, in terms of benefits associated with selective schools, was around general life satisfaction – and that result was small…” Tham tells EducationHQ. 

“I think if you take a big picture view of all the research that’s out there (on selective schools), the results are not surprising.” 

Tham is now calling for policymakers to launch a ‘full review’ into fully and partially selective schools across the country. 

“And really importantly, we need the results of those studies to be made publicly available so that anyone can look at the results and see for themselves,” she adds. 

“Some parents are investing a lot of time, energy and resources into trying to get into these schools, but they’re doing it based on how they feel and what they think, but there’s no evidence [to support their decision]. 

“I think they need to be informed about what they’re getting themselves into, and what they’re getting their children into.”

Tham has further concerns about the ‘lack of transparency’  that she says clouds the process selective public schools actually use to enrol their students. 

Aside from entrance exams, the research notes there is no accessible information about what kind of academic performance is considered, and it’s unclear just how many students are being selected in this way. 

“We argue that if (public) schools are enacting selective processes, they should be upfront about how they are doing so. 

“This is important information for policymakers and researchers because selectivity can contribute to school stratification and residualisation in non-selective schools,” the research argues. 

Tham says it’s incredibly tricky to track selective schools’ influence on individual student outcomes because most of the data that’s available via governments is aggregated up to the school level. 

“It makes things very blurry, which is the issue around the lack of transparency, because if the data is not detailed enough, it means that we can’t actually do our investigations. 

“This means that selectivity continues, but without an evidence base to support whether there are positive outcomes associated with selective schooling,” Tham explains. 

While NSW is widely known as the centre of selective schooling, with 21 fully selective schools in operation, Victoria has around 35 partially selective schools, and four fully selective schools, Tham points out. 

“There’s also some gifted intelligence programs that are popping up in Queensland, which are kind of based on the same principles. 

“So, there is a lot of selectivity in the system ... I don’t think that there’s enough evidence to justify expanding selectivity in the school system, until we can clearly say that there’s major benefits associated with that type of schooling,” she contends. 

Tham says that ultimately, selective schools work against our bid to create a truly inclusive and equitable education system. 

And given the majority of students in selective schools come from advantaged backgrounds, Tham adds, there are big questions to be asked here. 

“I’ve [received] a lot of comments from the public saying that, even though there might not be major benefits associated with selective schools, the students themselves have better experiences of selective schools. 

“And I think that is an important thing … but at the same time, the purpose of the school system is to provide equity and opportunity – and equity means that you provide the most amount of support to the students who need it the most,” Tham says. 

The academic says it’s difficult to justify selective schooling when the majority of the students it serves would go on to pursue university-related pathways anyway. 

“And from what we found, they’re not more likely than other students with similar abilities to succeed.”

The study found that academic selectivity ‘permeates’ across all three school sectors. Somewhat surprisingly, a similar proportion of public and independent schools ‘always’ engage in academically selective practices; 17.9 and 16 per cent, respectively. 

In contrast, 22.6 per cent of Catholic schools enrolled students via selective practices, the study noted. 

More research in this area, and especially in the Australian context, is desperately needed, Tham says.

“I’ve been doing research in this field for a couple of years, and I just hadn’t come across a study that did what we did. 

“I think it was just a missing piece of evidence that needs to be published.”