The findings were published in a new peer-reviewed paper in the British Journal of Educational Studies challenges the idea that academically selective schools are necessary for intelligent students to achieve well.
Selective schools are government-funded schools that only admit the best-performing students. Pupils take a standardised entrance exam, with the highest achievers entering.
Some argue that selective schools are necessary to enable bright pupils to reach their full academic potential. Selective schools can outperform or perform equally to elite schools in senior examinations, but without the high fees charged to parents. Selective schools can therefore offer a means for children from low socio-economic backgrounds to receive a first-class education.
Others, however, argue that selective schools disproportionately benefit children from high socioeconomic backgrounds whose parents can afford private tuition to prepare them for entrance exams.
“Studies show that parents want to enroll their children in selective schools because they believe it will increase their child’s chances of getting into a prestigious university and landing a high-paying, high-status job,” says Melissa Tham, a researcher at the Mitchell Institute at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia.
To find out whether selective schools have any benefits, Tham and colleagues Shuyan Huo and Andrew Wade followed nearly 3,000 students from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY), a nationally representative survey program that follows young Australians over an 11-year period. The survey began when respondents were 15 years old in 2009.
As expected, the selective schools included in the study had a higher proportion of high-achieving students, as measured by math and reading scores.
However, between the ages of 19 and 25, there was little difference between the educational and employment outcomes of children attending selective schools and those attending non-selective schools. For example, the study found that while 81% of students from selective schools had secured a job or university place by the age of 19, compared with 77.6% of students from non-selective schools, this difference disappeared when students were matched on key characteristics such as socio-economic background, gender and geographical location.
At age 25, all outcomes between students at selective and non-selective schools were non-significant, except for overall life satisfaction. Attending a selective school increased a student’s overall life satisfaction score by just 0.19 points. Meanwhile, students who attended a non-selective school were just as likely to continue their studies at university or get a job as their peers who attended selective schools.
“These modest results suggest that attending an academically selective school does not appear to provide significant benefits to individuals,” says Andrew Wade, co-author of the study.
“We argue that academically selective schools in the public sector contradict the principles of inclusive and equitable education that underpin Australia’s school system.”
According to the authors, the findings suggest that more research is needed to determine whether selective schools offer any benefits to academically capable students.
“Rather than modifying some aspects of the enrolment process, we see greater value in conducting a thorough and critical examination of fully and partially selective schools, and reducing selectivity if the purported benefits are not found,” Huo says.