Data reveals Sydney's culturally unbalanced schools

A very interesting article, as I have watched and seen over the years with my own children attending public schools the disparity in funding, and cultural diversity. My observations match what has now been researched.

One can only hope that the pollies will see some sense when it comes to fairly distributing our tax dollar, in order to create equity and access in education ... nah ... I must be dreaming!

Let's hope the unintended consequences of publishing data from national testing will be to shift the focus from misguided notions of teacher productivity onto tackling disadvantage. Curious to consider how any such discussion might sit with the current rhetoric about immigration, and Sydney's continuing obsession with real estate, which is at least in part libnked to notions of "good community" and "good schools."

The "zero per cent" figure could not be correct. Wenona welcomes diversity. It teaches Mandarin from Kindergarten, along with French, German and Japanese in later years. As well as having a diverse day girl community, the school has a number of boarders who come from countries where English is not the main language. It also has sister school arrangements in Vanuatu and China.

I find this study mis-leading. What really annoys me is when social scientists over-look things that are reinforced through common observation, and publish these papers in academic journals, as if it lends credibility to what they are saying.

If you want to talk about high performing elite schools, then over-looking monocultural selective high schools is an exercise in foolhardiness. I can just as easily make the argument that people from certain migrant backgrounds, are perpetrating their own form of self-isolation.

The question isn't about 'white flight' per se, elite private schools unfortunately have ludicrously high fees, which does marginalize people from lower-socio economic migrant backgrounds. This isn't right or wrong, it's just reality. If they made an effort to be less greedy, then I'm sure private schools would be more culturally diverse.

Birrong Boys High might have 94% of its student body coming from a non-English speaking background, it doesn't mean it's culturally diverse by default though, and not afflicted with monoculturalism.

The accuracy of the base data for this paper has got to be questioned and is the issue really about money.

I have two young children going through the school system, I have chosen a ' private school' for them. I actually chose the school they attend because of how they embraced other cultures. I find many private schools now embrace teaching languages to cater for the schools ethnic population wheher it be greek or mandarin etc as opposed to the more traditional french , german.

As a 2nd generation migrant growing up and through the school system from primary school to tertiary education. What I was more surprised about in my education was the ethnic segregation at university which I had never experienced in either primary or secondary schools.

i went to wenona and it had a number of students from other than english backgrounds. including myself. so get your stats right in saying there aren't any! when there is

the papers conclusion are way too simplistic
I am a migrant with school age children, what i suggest is that migrant families place a higher value on attending academically selective schools, private or public.
the paper states
'with wealthier suburbs public schools routinely educate a much higher proportion of migrant background students than do private schools'
Wenona is in North Sydney a wealthy area, the study amazingly suggests there are no migrant background students. In the same local area are North Sydney Grls and Boys, both selective schools. Both these public schools have a very high proportion of migrant background kids.

It is important to note that many "white" people are also from a migrant background, and that many "non-white" individuals have lived in Australia for generations. For instance, my father is from the former USSR, from a NESB although he is "white". Using terms like "white" and "Asian" are overly simplistic, and I consider them to be quite offensive.

Race and nationality are two different things, but often muddled up because they usually come together. eg an asian korean person.
But hell humans are everywhere, none of that really matters, I dunno, humans are crazy!

It's great to have all this discussion on this important topic. I'd like to reiterate that all the data in the study comes from the My School website, which shows Wenona's 0%. Obviously the stats don't give us the full picture of the specific circumstances of each individual school, but the overall patterns are clear - there is a yawning gap between public and private schools, particularly in the wealthy suburbs. The full paper also gives a rundown of the selective schools and other public schools, particularly those in the western suburbs, that are heavily migrant dominated, and argues that this is just as unhealthy a situation as that of the private elite schools.

Has it occurred to you that they ethnicity mismatch could be due to the aging Anglo- Australian population in the suburb who do not have school aged children in an area where younger families are from ethnic diverse backgrounds - rather than the racism implied by this article?