I have just finished a post on my personal web site, Media reactions to the My School web site. Bear with me a little if I just muse here from a particular and personal New England perspective.
In considering schooling, the standard of a school is set not by absolute results, but by how well the school does for its pupils considering the cohort those students come from. At a personal level, our choices about the schools for the girls has been based on the question of fit.
Before going on, the Sydney Morning Herald has released NSW school rankings based on the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) results. You will find the primary results here, the secondary results here.
I began my primary education at the Armidale Demonstration School, now the Armidale City Public School (rank 187), as did a lot of far more successful people than me. My Aunt taught at Ben Venue (rank 179), Drummond Memorial School (rank 367) is named after my grandfather.
My eldest daughter started at Newling Public School (rank 311) then went to the New England Girls School (primary rank 131) almost by accident because she won a scholarship. Clare, youngest, joined her there.
At secondary level, I went to The Armidale School (rank 212). By now my aunt had moved to teach at PLC (secondary rank 66), my first really serious girlfriend was going to the New England Girls School (secondary rank 147), most of my Armidale mates went to the Armidale High School (rank 399).
When we came to Sydney the girls completed their primary education at St Catherine's Waverley (rank 94) and then did their secondary education there too (secondary rank 68). We deliberately chose St Catherine's because it was non-selective.
Does the higher NAPLAN ranking for St Catherine's mean that the girls got a better education there than they would have in Armidale? Absolutely not. Would the girls have got a better education at the top three ranked NAPLAN schools (James Ruse Agricultural High School, North Sydney Girls High, North Sydney Boys High)? Absolutely not. In fact, it would probably have been a disaster!
I have deliberately chosen Armidale to make my point because I know it best and because it is such a major educational centre. Similar arguments can be applied to other parts of New England.
I get so tired of some of this stuff.
I was at a lunch Tuesday and there was a discussion on university education. I made a point about the value of a University of New England education. A friend of many years looked at me strangely and said but they won't meet people. By this, he really meant access to high level people.
I actually got quite angry. We both have kids at the University of New South Wales. I asked him how many contacts his son had made of this type, already knowing the answer which was, of course, almost none. The place is just too big. I then said that it was in fact easier to build networks at UNE because of its smaller size.
The risk of the My School web site is that it is likely to further entrench this type of prejudice. If you look at the geographic classifications attached to schools, there are just two, metropolitan and provincial.
The subdivision between the two is, I think, based on the ARIA distance based geographic classification where metropolitan equals major city as defined by ARIA, provincial the rest. This means, for example, that schools in Tweed Heads, Maitland, Cessnock and Newcastle are classified as metropolitan, those in Lismore, Armidale, Tamworth or Coffs Habour are provincial.
Even expressed in this way, you can see that metropolitan/provincial as geographic descriptors have very little meaning. However, there is something worse, and that is the way in this country provincial has the meaning controlled from outside, second rate. We simply do not have the admittedly sometime imperfect US capacity of being able to attach excellence to things independent of location.
As a senior public servant and then as a consultant I work with words and mental constructs all the time. As part of this, I did things like change the words used in order to change sometimes deeply held perceptions.
To a substantial degree, New England and its schools are caught in a trap set by current mental constructs and their associated words. It is very hard to see how to break out.
Correction:
I wrote above:
The subdivision between the two is, I think, based on the ARIA distance based geographic classification where metropolitan equals major city as defined by ARIA, provincial the rest. This means, for example, that schools in Tweed Heads, Maitland, Cessnock and Newcastle are classified as metropolitan, those in Lismore, Armidale, Tamworth or Coffs Habour are provincial.
I was partially incorrect. The My School web site states:
Description of where the school is located, with four classifications of metropolitan, provincial, remote and very remote outlined here. More specific definitions are provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
So it is an ARIA based classification, with provincial apparently combining inner and outer regional.
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