29-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Selective schools are a NSW educational experiment that needs a revamp
Attempting to change entrenched ideas about education can be Herculean and sometimes thankless task.
Consider Newington College's plan to gradually admit girls to the 162-year-old institution and the legal pushback by Old Boys who believe going co-educational is a betrayal of school tradition.
Now the Herald 's chief reporter Jordan Baker has shone the spotlight on iniquities posed by NSW's selective public schools as government hangs on to a system that has grown into one potentially damaging children's development by locking them in to excessive tutoring.
The madness and sadness of subjecting children to such institutionalised stress was exposed once and for all earlier this month when riot police were called to quell crowds at the 2025 selective schools test conducted in non-conducive mega testing centres around Sydney where the bulk of the state's 17,559 year 6s vied for 4200 places. The resultant omnishambles also forced the cancellation of the exams for some students.
The selective school mania is a NSW speciality. Victoria has four, Western Australia has one, but NSW boasts 42 (some fully, some partially). A recent policy change reserves 20 per cent of places for Indigenous and disadvantaged students, and those with a disability, but not all places are filled because the students do not meet the minimum academic threshhold.
In the 1980s, NSW had seven selective schools but both Coalition and Labor governments pushed the selective system to win votes and halt the flight of middle-class families to private schools that ironically partly came courtesy of Commonwealth and state governments' funding polices.
They failed on both accounts, even as research found children attending academically selective schools gained no advantage and the Gonski Report alerted Australia to huge inequities in education years ago. By taking top-performing students out of comprehensive public schools and turning selective schools into a prize, governments created what parents now perceive as a two-tier system of premium and second-rate public schooling.
That said, until recently, the selective public school system had served our state well over the years. But public disquiet had been mounting amid the sometimes-exploitative coaching industry cashing in on parental aspirations. Now even former Coalition education ministers Adrian Piccoli and his successor, Rob Stokes, believe the time has come to rethink the state's selective school system. 'It's a bit like we've created an addiction to create specialist schools, and once we started we never weaned ourselves off,' Stokes said.
Politicians must have the courage to dismantle the selective system and provide the kind of quality replacement education that meets the expectations and aspirations of all parents.
