Selective Entry Schools

Creating new selective entry schools will increase the gap between high performing public schools and the rest, the Principal of a Melbourne school has said.

Clare Entwisle, Principal of Kew High School in Melbourne’s east, said the proposed introduction of two new selective schools by the State Government would mean public schools such as hers would lose talented students.

“[The selective concept] robs other schools of their cream and this has a dumbing down effect,” Ms Entwisle said.

“[Kew High] is not too bad now as we have a good crop of high achievers, but in the past it really did mean we were robbed of our best and brightest. Some schools do really suffer the effects.”

The State Government made the promise of two new coeducational selective entry schools in 2006, to complement the two Victoria already has in Melbourne High School for boys and Mac Robertson Girl’s High School for girls.

Patricia Tursi, a teacher at Box Hill Senior Secondary College says she supports the governments move to introduce the new schools.

“The schools will give many more students the chance to experience a more rounded education involving co-curricular activities they wouldn’t have had access to before, with other students who really want to there,” she said.

“Having a selection process means the schools can produce a genuine academic community, which will hugely benefit the student’s education and entire development.”

Ms Entwisle, however, believes the schools simply take the credit for the work the student’s previous school had done.

“Why should one school be able to take the best from another and then take credit for the results?” she said.

“The government has a responsibility to support all schools, not set up quasi private schools in the system to hold up as the best.”

Mac Robertson Girl’s High School has topped the state in terms of VCE results every year since 2002, and Melbourne High’s median ENTER score in 2006 was 95.35, putting half of its students in the top five per cent of the state.

With just two academically exclusive schools, Victoria lags well behind New South Wales which has a total of 17 schools requiring students to take a test prior to enrolment.

The State Government has said the new schools have been budgeted at $20 million, with one to be put in North Melbourne and the second in the outer eastern growth corridor, and will be ready within the next four years.