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?