I grew up as a bright kid in a depressed area of Brisbane and, thank god, managed to get into the one selective school which Queensland then had - Brisbane State High School.

The advantages went beyond merely having an academic "hot house". As a primary school student in my local area, was ostracised because I was more interested in reading at lunch than I was in chucking rocks at cars. I was a nerd, not one of the cool kids. The smart-but-unpopular kid is virtually a cliche.

I got into my selective high school and I was among peers. We were *all* kicking ass academically and, lo and behold, nobody was ostracised for wanting to spend their lunchtimes in the library.

To suggest that bright students should be forced to remain in crap public schools as "pilots" is asking these bright kids to sacrifice opportunities for the sake of other students, who will most likely ostracise them as a "nerd" anyway, at least until they need someone to cheat off in tests. It's not much of a sell when the alternative is a school with other bright kids, with teachers who are used to engaging with bright kids, and where achievement is celebrated rather than being cause for embarrassment.

If standard public schools want bright kids, then the schools themselves have to find ways to attract those kids. The schools have to offer enrichment programs, learning resources, private study spaces, and most importantly an answer to endemic bullying. They have to put as much effort into the talented kids as they do into the strugglers. The schools have to realise that in today's consumerist world, if they want to recruit the best they have to offer the best. The private schools realised this years ago.

Thank god for select schools.

Stephen's questioning of selective schooling raises the current fashionable concept which has society's head in the sand; "the level playing field".
People just don't have the same skill, intelligence, comprehsion and talent, and it is misguided compassion to attempt enforced equalisation.
Surely the selective system has the same teachers as other government schools, and it is the academic quality of the student which differs.

What is wrong with that?

As long as the less competent in every field of endeavour are not represed deliberately, and are given the chance and help to improve to whatever standard they choose, then society can function with less greed and envy.It is important to know the reasons for the standard we choose, then set our aim accordingly.

Don't let youngsters go through the frustration and anger of striving to be better than everyone else.
Help them set their sights at their level of ability, do what they can well, and live happily.
That is the skill of an educator.

Selective Schools are a croc.

I was a bright kid in a disadvantaged school and i am very glad i had people of eclectic abilities all around me.

Succeeding in life is not just about hitting the books or fostering an academic hothouse, it is about the power of interaction, social skills, leadership skills and communication with people of differing skills and values.

We dont want to breed elitism, why place a bright kid in a non realistic environment where they have less chance to shine due to competition and they loose their confidence and belief in themsleves.

We have universities for this reason, my university was elite and that is where the hothouse can and does exist.

We dont need to shelter our children away from the world at a critical age, we need them to exist in harmony with a diverse world.

If you felt you where better off by going there, good on you, but i bet you would have been better off if you stayed put and delt with things, and got through those difficult years. You may be better for it and your ability to lead may be better.

The fatal omission from this article is that it pays no attention to what the parents of academically gifted children want. If they want to send their children to selective schools, and there are not enough such schools, many of them will send them to private schools. The decline of the public system, already very apparent, will accelerate until all public schools become the residual schools they already are in many suburbs of Sydney. Unfortunately for the lefties, there is no monopoly of schooling, and government comprehensive schools have to compete for students with private and selective schools, with the weakest going to the wall, and the devil taking the hindmost. The main benefit of private schooling, which is not mentioned much, is that disruptive students can be expelled.

If advocates of government schools really want to increase enrolment they should advocate the establishment of a series of borstals (with copious corporal punishment) as a deterrent to disruptive students who can be sent there and a guarantee that government schools are worth attending.

Top marks Anthony, but I wonder how we stop this rubbish from infecting the entire system.
We always had selective schooling with the academic kids, taking the more difficult courses grouped together. That is, until some twit started the idea that streaming was bad for the less capcapable.

It then intensified when only 10% of kids went on to seinor high school. The rest went to work, & learned something more usefull than music, dance & art for a couple of years.

The push to keep kids at school longer was used to keep them off the unemployment statistics, by a "B" grade government. It had nothing to do with the kids welfare, or future. The same way we got so many on disability benifits, for a broken fingernail.
All this has done is dilute the pool of teaching skill, & fill the schools with kids who don't want to be there.

Perhaps, now that we have such a high level of employment, we could start getting these kids doing something usefull for the community, & themselves, by allowing them to go to work, at an earlier, & more suitable for them, age.
This way we may get the best teachers teaching the kids who want to be taught. Wouldn't, that be wonderful, for all concerned.

My family moved around a lot, so I went to several high schools, two were private, one of which was selective, and the others were regular public schools.
I can say categorically that the selective school was light years ahead of all the others, in terms of culture, achievement and student enjoyment.
The author is suggesting that bright students should suffer for the benefit of those who are less intelligent, which to me sounds like socialist lefty rubbish.
Nice idea, let's dumb down the population even further, so everyone is as stupid as each other. What a demented concept.

Gifted students need an environment they can shine in. Not to be responsible for the education of others. In my experience, those with lesser academic ability are more likely to behave in a disruptive manner, and hassle or ridicule kids who are bright, not learn from them. This causes those with an intellect to pretend to be dumb, so they "fit in". This is the reality of the classroom, and socialist notions of fairness & equality have no place in education.

The world is a competitive place, so why molly coddle kids into thinking it's not? They'll be in for a rude awakening when they leave school if we make them think all things and people are equal, since they're clearly not.

Where will the next generation of innovators come from if the progress of gifted students is retarded by their peers, just to make some communists feel better about their' children's lack of academic ability?
Intelligence is like having a full head of hair when you hit middle age, you've either got it, or you don't.

I'm sure Mao would be pleased by this logic. If parents without the money for good private schools want to send their children to the best public school they can, I can't see any reason to stop them (and for that matter, are you going to stop people moving to neighborhoods with good schools, as already occurs, for instance?). We should applaud governments that try and set up schools that allow gifted children to reach their maximum potential.

In addition, I find it amazing that people would want to use young children in a game of social engineering. If bright children excel more with other bright children (which we know is true), should they be socially obligated to help those not as bright as themselves at their own expense?

"Remaining schools will be left behind, drained of students and resources, exposed to greater gaps in academic achievement..."

I seriously doubt the impact will be that bad. So there's a few less brainiacs in the other schools, so what? Maybe it will be a good thing, maybe the other schools can remove some of the emphasis on science and maths being the be all and end all of academic achievement, maybe it will create room for the other kids whose abilities and talents in life lie in other less recognised areas so that they can achieve and shine and feel validated.

I went to Albert Park College (the third lowest performing high school in Victoria) in years 7 and 8 and then went to a selective school for the rest of high school.
During my time at APC, I would’ve killed for a decent education, but unfortunately couldn’t afford one. So I sat the entrance exam and was accepted into the selective school- not on the basis of my bank account, ethnicity or anything else but on the basis of my academic ability.
Saying that bright kids who can't afford a private school education should be forced to stay in local, crappy high schools to make other kids feel better is a total farce. As a student, it isn’t my responsibility to educate others students. It is however my right to be educated. If students aren't performing well (and this is dragging the teaching standard down), is this the teachers' responsibility, or mine?
I enjoyed my years at APC in a non-academic way. I played lots of soccer and made some good friends I’ve stayed in touch with. But in no way was the academic component of the school work appropriate. In year 8 I found myself taking year 10 mathematics, just to get a bit of a challenge. In English, I would write essays that I'd had two months to complete, 10 minutes before they were due in, and received an A+.
At the selective school, I was challenged, and I found this so freeing! I met people from all over Melbourne, with very multicultural backgrounds. The one thing we had in common was a drive for learning. So in history/geography classes, I actually learnt history and geography. In LOTE, I picked up some Indonesian. In English, I had to work really hard for a B+. Similarly for the other subjects.
No, I didn't become a snob. I just realised that some people are academically driven and some people are not. As a person, I'm happy to associate with everyone. But as a student, I want to be educated with the driven.

The tragedy is of course that there are still people in the twentyfirst century who believe this stuff about holding back intelligent people in the name of social engineering. Has the chequered history of educational experimentation been entirely in vain?

It does however bring into the limelight once again the eternal questions: what is the purpose of school-based education? who should pay for it, and how? and encompassing the first two in one universal question... what should be the role of Government in education?

As it stands at present, parents who would like their children to receive a traditional, challenging, emphasis-on-the-intelligent education are obliged to explore the private sector. If there is no alternative in the form of a selective school with a strong academic background, they must either pay up or miss out.

To redress the balance somewhat by Government encouraging an expansion of the selective school concept can only be a good thing for these people, except that it is paid for by the population at large. Who, it might be argued, will eventually become less inclined to provide these advantages to only the bright kids.

Ideally, of course, the standard of all schools should be raised to the point where there is no discernible difference in the opportunity provided. Wouldn't that be a more worthwhile objective than dumbing down?

The article's conclusions are statistically valid.

The thing about educational achievement is that (even allowing for other factors) it is proportional to family background and socioeconomic status. This has various consequences:

* Selective schools are socially selective AND academically selective. The cases brought up here are valid, but are exceptions to the general trend: students moving to selective schools after Year 8 are often either coming from private schools and high-performing public schools. There is a cap (2%) on the number of students that come from any one school: the schools not meeting that are the under-performing ones. That doesn't mean that there aren't many students who benefit from selective schools, but the article wasn't arguing for total abolition anyway.

* Only a certain number of people will really benefit from a selective education anyway. This is shown by the SEALP schools in Victoria, which run selective classes within government schools. Some of these programs are comparable to actual selective schools (like Balwyn High's), some barely make a difference at all. The difference is in the social background of the students; a selective school/class isn't a magic bullet that inherently helps anything. Two big central selective schools might be more effective than more local selective schools.

* The biggest problem in government education in Australia is small, under-performing local schools. Albert Park is a good example (it's been forced to close). The situation's even worse in Sydney where there are more selective schools. These schools are targeted for weak academic performance. People constantly leave them for other schools (selective, non-selective, private) and they end up with only the worst students. Government often tries to intervene, but if the local community doesn't support the local school, it tends to die. Four schools are closing in Victoria at the end of this year for this reason.

I'm not totally convinced how much selective schools help the students that attend there (1% improvement on ENTER score? who knows?) but I agree that they potentially create problems for local schools, and risk endangering educational opportunities for all students, not just the intelligent ones.

Thank you for the offical line.
Perhaps you have noticed from the forgoing, we just don't buy it.
In fact we reckon that you have damaged more than you have helped with that load of BS.

Don't be fooled, hasbeen, that's not the official line. Whoever they are, schoolguidevictoria is not the voice of any formal instrumentality. In fact if you take a glance at their web page, it is a single A4 sized questionnaire giving the opportunity (to whom, one wonders, and to what end?) to rate schools on a scale of one to ten.

They state their mission as "By 2007 we aim to provide comments, statistics, and ratings for every secondary school in Victoria... Our aim as editors of schoolguidevictoria.net is to provide an online guide to school choice in Victoria which is free from advertising or bias."

You can tell that they will not let any bias creep into their assessment from the comment in their post:

>>I'm not totally convinced how much selective schools help the students that attend there (1% improvement on ENTER score? who knows?)<<

If their interpretation of statistics from their survey attains the same standard of precision, it will clearly add precisely nothing to the debate, and only serve to muddy the waters still further.

Spurious claims from self-appointed pseudo-expert sources are the bane of intelligent debate, and we have just experienced a classic. Where do people get off producing stuff like this?

I don't think you need to worry about www.schoolguidevictoria.net either. Just look at the logic.

1) Selective schools are socially and academically selective. So?
2) Selective schools don't help, its all a big social background confound. If you believe that, you don't need to send your children there.
2.1) Only a small number of children benefit from selective schools. So? Only a small number of people benefit from a whole range of things (PhDs, cancer drugs, ...), but that doesn't mean to say they are bad.
3) Parents take their children out of poor schools. So would I -- wouldn't most people given the oppurtunity? Is the idea that children in bad schools should be punished by being forced to stay?
4) Taking children out of poor schools creates problems for all students. This point is presumably in conflict with (2), since if point (2) is correct, which suggests that selective schools make no difference, then presumably it shouldn't make a difference to the schools that lose students to them either.

i went to a private school and had no end of money spend on my education up until the age of 18 , which upon i finished school and promptly got into crime because i was not smart enough for uni and had had limited experience in "hands on tools" like mechanical knowlegde which i have ended up thriving at . lucky for me i was busted by the cops and given a comunity service order , which taught me some work eithic's , (iv'e worked every day since then ) , schools need to start catering towards individual students , and concentrating on the talents within each person , rather than force them into learning something they have no interest in . changing the way we educate people will change and shape our future .

The article is mistaken for a number of reasons:
(1) Although, academically, the whole might perform better without selective schools, the gifted minority are being made to suffer a lot for the small benefits of the majority. This is not ethical. Every child deserves an appropriate education where they have a chance to learn.
(2) Even if the average performance is better, it is the abilities of our leaders and innovators (the gifted people) who shape our future. By holding these children back, you are actually giving our country a worse chance for real progress.
(3) There is more to learning than academic ability. Gifted children often develop poorly in normal schools. Sometimes they become rebels due to frustration and boredom. Sometimes they are bullied and withdraw. Sometimes, like me, they fail to develop resilience and the ability to cope with failure because everything they've done, they succeed at so easily (until they're in the real world). Often they grow up feeling different, isolated and alone while at the same time being denied the chance to really show what they can do. These kinds of problems are not taken into account in just looking at academic results.
(4) Not having enough selective schools will simply mean that all of our future leaders will end up coming from rich families who could afford to send their children to private schools. It will result in an even more divided and elitist society. If selective schools mainly have children from middle class backgrounds now, it is because there are not enough selective schools and the competition for places excludes talented children from more disadvantaged homes.

We definitely need better education across the board but more selective schools is at least a step in the right direction. It will give talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds an appropriate education and a real chance.

I think that everybody deserves an excellent education regardless of their academic abilities. I feel that this type of decision is another move towards the segregation of society which is already a worry.

Also, school provides much more than an academic education; it is an education in life where mixing with people from all sorts of backgrounds enables a well-balanced citizen.

It is also important for parents to recognise that an education in a private or selective public school does not guarantee that a person is going to obtain a fantastic well-paying job or career either. My work experience and and that of other people that I have known has shown that I, as a former student of a "poor" public school have achieved the same work as others whose parents forked out an enormous sum for their education.

I think that unless children are "geniuses" and find it difficult to cope in an ordinary school situation, bright children are better off being "big fishes in little ponds" rather than being educated in a narrow situation. I remember a teacher commenting on my very bright daughter: that she would learn despite anything.

I have three children who all have good jobs. What pleases me most however, is that they are well-rounded people with a social conscience and a wide circle of friends and plenty of outside interests.

This artice has reminded me about "Opportunity Schools" that used to exist in the 1960s. I remember one or two students in my final year of primary school went to one of these. That would have been about 1966. I missed out because I was only the 5th smartest in my year and so the offers were made to the cream of academia. Has anyone here had experience of those types of schools, and if they did, how did they find the experience? If they don't exist anymore, I would like to know why.

Lainie,
We need to worry more about private primary schools than selective secondary schools when it comes to teaching our children tolerance for those different to ourselves. Most of this well-roundedness that you speak of develops during primary-school age. Students wanting to go to selective schools don't want to be elitist, they just want the chance to be themselves. Besides, the experiences of genuinely gifted children in disruptive schools could just as easily breed citizens who are bitter and jaded rather than tolerant. Everyone needs a chance to thrive - to be active in accomplishing things you didn't already know you could do - just to feel alive! I was so bored my entire schooling life, sometimes I just felt like screaming! You say it's OK for real geniuses - well not all the real geniuses get to go. You might live in Melbourne and get lucky - what if you live in rural Victoria? I hope that selective schools are introduced in large regional centres. For example, Geelong could easily support one.

VTCHRIS, if not to individual students, at least to different levels of students.
My son was lucky to go to a school which catered for the less gifted student. The school had not been so great for my daghter, who wanted an OP 1 or 2. The only kids who achieved high OPs at this school were getting lots of outside coaching. The top 4 kids were teaching the teachers, maths C & physics, in year 12.

This school however, had a great practical section, & an in school apprentice scheme. For my son, who could rebuild your car when he was 15, this was ideal.
He did 15 months of one day per week, of marine electrical apprentice course. This kept him interested, out of trouble, & I think helped him to an OP 9. In a one size fits all school, I think he would have become a trouble maker.

After school, he found the electrical course boring, & switched to engineering. After graduating, he found that booring, & went off to uni, & got his degree. There realy is more than one route to academic achievement.

The point is, my daughter would have had a much better time, in a selective school, but my son was much better suited to the lower academic approach of the large rural high school.
Streaming is better for all, including the teachers. Its the loony left, in the union, & the department, that insist on this other BS.

Take care when aiming blame at the loony left in education. We members of the loony left all have university degrees, remember?

Especially the loony left elite, who are the most likely to benefit from selective schooling since it meets the loony leftist requirement of being available to the poor and the loony elite requirement of catering for the gifted.

My family is a painful mixture of academic high achievers and dismal failures. Nothing in between. The only approach so far that caters for all of us is the much-maligned child centred approach which works on each kid's strengths and weaknesses.

The nerdy academic ones do need an environment where they are free to be nerdy, but the non-academic ones also need an environment which values other skills as the comments so far show. The constant bilge about back to the basic three Rs duds the low academic achievers the most because it doesn't value other skills.

We need selective schools, but we also need better funded programs for kids whose talents lie in other areas and other schools.

I think that Selective Schools are destroying the system and I am a mother of highly intellectually gifted children.

One of my daughters is in a Selective High School now, she went there hoping for an appropriate "education" she was tired of being baby sat, but the thing it didn't really make a difference as the curriculum was still aimed at her year/age level. The only good thing about it was that she no longer had to keep proving that she was smart - she was accepted.

She used to enjoy mixing with a wide range of students in the comprehensive system but couldn't cope with the educational neglect. She would have loved to have gone locally and been able to get appropriate education. What she is getting now in a Selective School is a testing experience but still she isn't at a level of learning.

Selective Schools should only be for the children that are so gifted that the normal school curriculum doesn't meet their needs and they need individualised education plans and the schools should already have noticed that, they shouldn't need to do a multiple choice test to identify them. If the curriculum at their year level is sufficient to meet their needs then they dont need selective schools any more than the next person and their needs should be able to be met in a good quality local comprehensive school.

Selective Schools are being used by comprehensive schools to justify neglecting gifted children and to justify them not doing their job.

They do more harm than good. Children shouldn't have to win access to the education that they crave or need, it should be available to all in every school.

A few people in this discussion have suggested, effectively, "select" schools for areas of aptitude other than academic aptitude. I have no problem with this - a darned good idea, at least for the cities (where the economies of scale work). Why not have one school with a great kitchen, say, for aspiring chefs, rather than ten schools each with crappy kitchens.

It's strange that NSW, at least, has "Sports High Schools" and nobody seems to mind. It's OK to be an elite sports person in Australia but it's frowned on to aspire to be a high level thinker. Kind of like sports people getting free bed board and training at the AIS while uni students trying to become doctors and scientists pay HECS and wait tables.

The other concern expressed is that somehow bright children will miss out on opportunities to socialise with all types, if they're in selective schools. Actually, I think the reverse is true. At my (select) school, there was an increible ethnic mix, a wide social mix, a range of religions and politics etc etc etc. In my view there is no doubt that I was exposed to a more heterogenous culture there than I would have in a stratified local school fed by a single socio-economic area with a single dominant ethnic mix.

My own view is that students who test in IQ tests in the top 15 percentiles should be automatically entitled to attend a select school, to give them the same thing that an average student takes for granted - an education which enriches, challenges and develops them.

Just one problem, there's not much evidence that selective schools actually confer much advantage in the long run.
There have now been 4 (that's right 4) separate studies ( in Melb, WA, Britain and I can't remember the other - sorry - the one in Melb was by Ian Dobson, from memory, if someone wants to google it) that show that while more kids from private and selective schools get into uni ( as they should, because they select their students - either on test scores or ability to pay), by the end of the first year at uni, kids from comprehensive public high schools are outperforming both their private AND selective school peers by an average of 5 marks. That's right, they haven't just caught up - which you might be able to explain by saying its because they've now got access to a level playing ground - they've outstripped their supposedly better educated, brighter peers. Why? What's going on here? No-one has given a definitive answer, but some theories might include that comprehensive schools teach kids to learn, not pass an exam, or that the kids are in a more real and laid back environment in comprehensive schools and this pays dividends in a more real laid back environment like uni, or that the lack of high expectations frees up these kids to enjoy learning, rather than feel they must achieve, achieve, achieve and so burn out. Or that the world wide experts are right, and that segregating our kids on academic lines disadvantages the kids left in comprehensive schools and doesn't advantage the others, hence the flowering of the comprehensive public school kids in a more mixed ability environment.
Poland changed its education system from academically selective to comprehensive in 2003 and has bounded up the achievement charts for all its school kids in the OECD. It is the most improved schooling system in the world currently. What's going on here, then, I wonder?

Anthony so what happens to kids who are intellectually gifted and are also gifted at sport and music. If you have schools that only focus on one area you have to sacrifice the others. Schools should have a range of focuses to cater for every student. They should aim for the highest of levels in all areas as that way they include everybody, when the aim is mediocre a lot of students miss out.

My children are identified gifted one has an IQ of between 160-165 SB4 and SBLM, the other between 150-154 SB4 and SBLM and the other between 145-150 SB4 and WISC. All of them were extremely advanced and all suffered serious neglect in the education system that resulted in them suffering psychological distress and health issues. Despite knowing that the system would not place them in Selective Schools and they even lost their appeals saying that on the 'tests' on the day they didn't score high enough. Funny given that on every other test they always scored at very high levels.

When we requested documents under FOI there is alarming evidence of bias and manipulation. Formal complains have been made that have been allowed to be handled and covered up by those that we allege are responsible whilst my children continue to miss out on their identified educational needs.

My youngest daughter who was on Today tonight last week missed out for next year, she was beyond stage outcomes at school identified gifted by the DET own psycholgoists and the UNSW. Everybody notices she is gifted yet the DET’s seems to not to want to identify her and place her.

When there are schools that are worth so much money and there is no supervision and accountability there is a serious risk of corruption. The system isn’t dumbing down It is cutting down and I believe that there is a conspiracy against gifted children and especially gifted children who’s parents speak out.

Jolanda,

Not sure whether you're for or against selective schools, because you start out kind of anti but then clearly are working hard to get your own kids in. On balance I think you're pro select schools but your real concern is how the selection process is administered.

On that score you get no rebuttal from me. Once select schools are formed, the potential for rorting of the selection process is massive, especially once those schools start producing superior results. Further, the potential to apply irrelevant criteria (student conduct, etc) may have perverse outcomes. sometimes gifted children have poor conduct precisely because the school is not in their league.

So the bottom line seems to be more select schools, but a more transparent and rigorous selection process.

Anthony

Anthony the reason I have fought to have my children placed in Selective Schools is because the comprehensive system was unable to meet thier needs as identified highly gifted children and they were suffering serious pscyhological distress as a result. Everybody said that when they got to Selective Schools that things would get better. The Primary schools would blame lack of funding and resources for neglecting their needs. Problem is that when the time came they wouldn't let them in.

There was also the issue of school always trying to mark them down and put them down so as to present them as not that gifted and me as a pushy mother so that they wouldnt' appear to be so neglectful.

Educationally selective schools do not cater for highly gifted students as the majority of highly gifted students need to be accelerated through the curriculum the only advantage is that they no longer have to continously prove that they are smart.

I believe that alot of students that are obtaining placement are not gifted, they are just very well trained and to me that is so unfair as it just allows those that are in a better learning environment to have an even greater advantage.

I do have a serious issue with the Selection procedures as I know for a fact that they are biased, corrupted and unfair.

Thank God I went to a selective school. Some of you don't know what it is like being stuck in an underprivileged State School: full of thugs, junkies, homophobes and anti-intellectuals, then the students followed this example. I think I was bashed after school just about every day of the week.

What was the school response? "Its character building". I hated school. No wonder so many gifted kids suicide.

I honestly just wanted to learn, I liked books and I actually did my homework. This was socially unacceptable in the local state school and I was cast as a freak for doing the right thing. The geeks were game for the meat-heads.

The teachers didn't care. They turned their backs on bullies, as they were just bullies themselves; there were never enough classrooms, so we had classes in corridors. Standards? What standards?

I was outcast because my parents were not in the union movement or in the ALP. My God did the thugs bash the crap out of me for my parents not being "real workers".

Our teachers frequently asked us what our parents voted for. My hand was the only non-ALP hand that innocently rose. Bashed after school: yet again. That was some time ago.

Now that I'm a teacher, I assure you that not much has changed in State School environments except the politics. Some of the policies have changed.

These are unfair distractions for the kids.

No wonder so many take refuge to the private school system. Selective schools are a better refuge for learning than private schools, in principle, as education should be free for all.

The other thugs and bastards can use the schools as child minding centres if they like.

Give the students who want to learn the choice to do so in learning environments in peace, without such distractions and unfair peer stress.

I hope you teach in a private school saint fletcher, I'd hate my kids to get you as a teacher in their public one. Its a pity you had such a horrible experience, but I can quote you many equally horrible experiences in private ones. That's the trouble, individual schools are only examples of individual schools. But one or two bad experiences in a public school and it seems perfectly acceptable to damn the whole lot of them. Trinity kids can brutalise year 7's with an anaconda, or Tara teachers can refuse to accept a students claim that she was raped ona school excursion, or a parent can sue an expensive Victorian private school because her child left unable to read, and it doesn't even seem to damage the rep of the school involved. I wonder why they are all teflon coated, yet any bit of muck about one public school seems to stick to the lot of them?
Both my daughters and I have had wonderful experiences in good old comprehensive public schools and gone on to uni. My husband went to expensive private ones, hated them all and failed to get to uni. But what do anecdotes prove? Only that some schools are good and some are not so good, and some are good for most kids but bad for some too, no matter whether public, private or whatever.

Not quite, Ena.

It's not good enough to take personal experience and try to argue it away just because it's personal experience. In that case, why have boards such as this one at all. Fletch has experience both as a student and as a teacher. As a student, he shared my experiences of ostracism and bullying because we wanted to learn and achieve rather than work on our capacities as Aussie yobbos. [Yes I carry some bitterness. So sue me.]

As a teacher, looking at the system from an entirely different perspective, and no doubt having experience of several schools and colleagues in many schools, he is in a position to show that the experiences which he and I, and others on this board, have related, are not just exceptional experiences of unlucky kids. In fact, Fletch argues, they arise as a necessary consequence of a public schooling system which is flatly unable to meet the needs of gifted children in a normal school environment - and which may in fact be anatagonistic towards those children.

You're right, this happens in private schools too. All the more reason to have publicly funded, merit-based select schools.

Anthony

I read the article as being for or against selective schools?

My personal experience makes me "for selective schools" I never went to one. WA had Modern School selective in as much as to gain entrance you passed a state set exam on one of two occasions, year six and year nine. Exam papers were published after each exam. I wisely decided I was not interested in higher maths and languages where points for entrance were highest. I went to East Perth Tech High, a trade school.
I enjoyed the education, if not the grossness evident,I and others who were interested in learning, protected ourselves from bullies by supporting each other.
I had compatriots who went to Mod. and while being envious of the environment of their school never did I feel envious of their opportunity. I could shape metal and wood, they could speak French, so? I didn't feel inferior.
Private schools were where you sent duds, they needed mothering, not for me!
I envied the companionship they gained at Uni. but found it with them socially thru idea exchange and sport.
Although not "one of them" I'm for opportunity schools as they are different, not better.
The Mod school blokes could never have survived the education I had.
my 2 cents.
fluff