They also provide our children with an education (in the classic sense). i.e. Our kids are taught basic skills (reading, writing and arithmetic -albeit less of this) but also how to apply their creative juices to a range of subjects and how to think about a problem, research it, develop a position and articulate this position.
At the end of their school journey they have to survive the HSC exams through which University selection is mediated. For all the shortcomings of the HSC system we all want our children to do as well as they can in and to get the highest possible mark - albeit NOT at the cost of their physical and mental health and with their self-esteem, love of learning and love of life intact!
Obviously the higher your ATAR the more choices you have in terms of University courses. Given we would all like our children to have the broadest set of choices available (subjects and institutions) it seems reasonable to want our schools to help our children do the best they can. By using the term "the best they can" I do not mean either force feeding nor overly pressuring the students with the single goal of a high ATAR. Rather providing a rich and diversified life journey through school, learning a lot about themselves and the world around them WHILE ALSO getting a mark that reflects their effort and capability.
In short I am sure both parents and students would both want and expect a school to provide them with the best chance at the highest ATAR possible (thus providing the broadest range of tertiary education choices).
Schools need to show that they can add value to the student base and provide great learning outcomes. Private schools have a greater need to prove out their case - if they are going to continue to charge in excess of $20,000 per year.
Given that academic performance is NOT the only measure of a school (have I provided enough caveats ?) it IS STILL a REALLY important measure of how a school performs and it is very interesting to reflect on the data that the recent (and past years) HSC performance highlights.
Much has been written about how to compare the academic performance of schools and with regard to the HSC, the best measure would be a scaled average mark. Sadly this is not available. However one statistic is provided, for HSC students, that remains a very useful measure of a school's overall academic performance.
The statistic is the number of subjects attempted at a school where a mark above 90 was obtained. The statistic is presented in two forms. Firstly as an absolute number (which is both meaningless and misleading as I will outline later) and secondly as a %. So this statistic works this way. If your School (A) has 350 students and they sit 6 exams each then you have (350x 6) 2,100 marks to log. If 200 of these marks are above 90 then your raw statistic is 200 and your % is 9.5%. So this means that of all the subjects sat for the HSC the student body achieved a mark of 90 or above in 9.53% of subjects sat.
The raw/absolute score is misleading and meaningless because it does not solve for school size. Take School A above and compare it to School B. School B has 100 students who sat 5 exams each. Therefore school B has 500 marks to log. Let's suppose that School B achieves an absolute mark of 175. i.e. of the 500 subjects that the students sat they achieved a mark of 90 or above in 175 of them. This 175 converts to a % score of 35%.
if you ranked schools academic performance on the raw number then school A (with a score of 200) would be seen to perform better than School B with a score of 175. Yet clearly School B has a much better academic performance, overall. At School B 35% of subjects attempted end up with a score of 90 or above whereas for school A only 9.5% do.
If you rank actual schools HSC performance (http://bettereducation.com.au/Results/Hsc.aspx) interesting things pop out.
Of the top 42 slots (cut off of 26% being the % of subjects achieving a mark of 90 or above) 20 schools are academically selective (Private and Public), 13 are Private non-selective Girl's schools, 4 Private non-selective Boy's schools and 5 co-ed schools.
The first observation is that Girls seems to do much better than boys academically in the HSC. This is not "new" news" and there are educators all over Australia and the world grappling with the issue of apparent under performance of boys up to their late teens. It is however quite impressive to see the performance of the non-selective girl's schools on the North Shore of Sydney.
The balance of this blog deals with a comparison of North Shore Private schools. The specific cohort of interest is Abbotsleigh,Barker,Knox,PLC Pymble, Ravenswood, Roseville, Wenona, Shore and Queenwood with a paricular focus on the area of North Sydney to Waitara. The reason for this focus is that there is a significant overlap of families with children at both boy's and girl's schools in this area and so when comparing schools two variables (socio-economic setting and family background) and somewhat normalised.
First I need to cover one more statistic...only because often families attending the schools mentioned above talk about how their cohort is much more varied than their competitor school. So let's deal with that little chestnut.
The Federal Government SES scores (providing a school with a score that is meant to represent the socio-economic status of the parent body) gives some indication as to the "range" of different cohorts schools have in their parent and student body. Note that an SES score of 132 (max score) basically means you have a wealthy parent body and your school will get the lowest possible Federal Government subsidy..
The main girl's schools in this North Shore catchment area (non-catholic) are (with their SES score in brackets) Abbotsleigh (126) , Pymble Ladies College (128) , Ravenswood (129), Roseville College (128), Wenona (129) and Queenwood (130). The main boy's schools are Barker College (although some 33% of their Yr10-12 cohort are girls - minority but a significant one) (127), Knox (128) and Shore (128).
Simple observation....All these schools have very similar socio-economic cohorts..... Further all of these schools are non-selective....OK to be exact Abbotsleigh does apparently select a portion of their cohort so they are not 100% non-selective...Ravenswood, Roseville, Wenona and Queenwood are ,as are Knox, Shore and Barker..Therefore these schools provide a very good comparison set.
Now the interesting part....
Firstly the raw data. Over the past 2 years some schools have shown quite significant variances in performance while others have remained relatively constant. Using the 2 year average tries to solve for soem fluctuations.The average (over the past 2 years 2009 and 2010) % score (i.e. subjects attempted etc etc) are;
Abbotsleigh 38%
PLC 39%
Ravenswood 37%
Roseville 31%
Wenona 32%
Queenwood 30%
Knox 29%
Shore 28%
Barker 23%
How do these schools do?.. The girl's school average was 36% and the boy's school average is 27%. As expected girls do better than boys, on average, at non-selective schools in the HSC.
There is some variability between the upper North Shore Girl's schools (Abbotsleigh, PLC and Ravenswood) and the lower North Shore Girl's schools (Wenona and Queenwood). However this geographic variability does not translate to the boy' schools where lower North Shore Shore school ranks along side upper North Shore Knox Grammar with Barker a reasonable level behind.
Yet there are more compelling observations that can be made with regard to the performance of the Barker cohort. Barker is wonderful school with incredibly impressive facilities and a wide range of offerings for its very large student base. It is also an interesting school as it is co-ed for the last three years.
Given Barker is 1/3 girls in years 10-12 some assumptions have to be made as to the academic performance of the girls that go from Abbotsleigh/Ravenswood/PLC/Roseville etc to Barker and some assumptions have to be made about the underlying Barker boy performance (before the girls came). By assumptions I refer to what academic performance mix do you assume if you need to end up at Barker's 23%. If 1/3 of your students are girls and 2/3 are boys how do you look at the performance of each group to end up with an overall performance of 23%.
Scenario 1
Let's assume that all the girls going to Barker perform as well as they would have if they stayed at their Year 7-9 school. Thus 1/3 of Barker's Year 12 group (the girls) would register a score of 36% (the girls average). Yet if this were true and the overall Barker HSC cohort ends up with a score of 23% then it would mean (simple maths...no magic or bias) that the underlying performance of the barker boys was 17%. This would suggest that the Knox cohort performs 70% BETTER than the Barker boy cohort (at 17%) . I think this is highly unlikely.
Scenario 2
Let's assume that the Barker boys perform at the same level as the Knox boys (29%). For this to be true it would mean that for Barker to end up with a score of 23% the girls in the Barker cohort would have a score of 12%....Given these girls left schools with an average score of 36% it is hard to imagine that they would have a natural performance level of 12%. So as above I think this scenario is also unlikely.
Which brings us to the most likely scenario.
Scenario 3
Here we assume that, for what ever reason, the girls that go to Barker achieve a mark that is 20% lower than the girls schools from which they came (i.e. around 29%). If you believe that the Barker boys can't be performing at 17% (Scenario 1 above) then you have to assume the girls going to Barker do worse than the girls that stay at Abbotsleigh, PLC etc because in the end the total cohort ends up at 23%.
In this third scenario with the girls performing at 29%, the Barker boys (to end up with an overall cohort performance of 23%) perform at a level of 20%. i.e. at this level the Barker boys perform 50% WORSE than their Knox friends a few kms down the road.
This scenario (or in fact the complete set) throw up some clear observations and a whole bunch of questions..
Firstly it is clear that Barker girls cohort , on average, do worse than the girls at schools from which they came. If the comparison is with the schools they came from (Abbotsleigh/PLC or Ravenswood) the variance is SIGNIFICANT. This variance can only be explained in one of two ways. Either the girls who choose Barker are the very bottom academic performers in their Yr9 schools (i.e. they were always going to average 29% or worse) OR they were tracking higher and something happened in their last 3 years of school.
Secondly it is clear that the Barker boys under perform Knox. This is not some minor variance but a huge chasm. In scenario 3 the Barker boys perform 50% worse than their Knox counterparts....The only way for Barker boys to achieve a score close to Knox would be to assume that the girls who go to Barker would of them selves rank 147 in the state. I think even the most generous, loyal Barker alumni would see this as unlikely.
Once the HSC results are posted each year schools publish a summary of their performance. Of course the schools will highlight the areas where they have excelled and they are unlikely to put forward areas where they struggled. In essence this end of year piece is a form of Marketing.
Yet this publication also forms an important part of the information set prospective parents use to evaluate schools and it is important that the information is not only accurate but allows for cross school comparisons.
Also Barker uses the same raw/absolute data to state the claim that Barker is the leading co-ed comprehensive school in the state. If they had used the % score then Barker would rank (in terms of comprehensive co-ed schools) behind Masada, All Saints College Bathurst, Reddem House and St.Marks Coptic Orthodox College with International Grammar School, St.Lukes Grammar and Cape Byron Rudolph Steiner school scoring very similar results to Barker.
Choosing a school for your child is a critical one and if you are fortunate enough to be able to choose between a raft of good private schools on the north shore of Sydney then choice should be made with completely transparent data.
Some parents will choose schools because of family links or sporting facilities or the provision of a co-ed environment. All reasonable factors to take into account. However at some level academic performance also matters and I feel it is important to get access to data that more easily presents the performance of schools. It is for this reason i have undertaken the analysis mentioned above.
In closing I should note that I am a long term Ravenswood parent and I do believe in the benefits of a girl's school. I went to a public high school and am very proud of that school and my time there. However I can also see the educational and social benefits that girls receive at a girls school.
As can be seen in my analysis above I have not looked to promote Ravenswood ahead of other schools but rather present the data (and the sources) in an open and transparent manner. I realise that some may find the comments upsetting but I would ask that reference be made to the data and what the data tells us.
