‘Rush to schools in wealthy suburbs skews the system’

‘Strugglers sit next to strugglers in some schools and the fortunate next to the fortunate…’

Jane Caro and Chris Bonnor, authors of the chapter ‘Getting past Gonski: every child deserves a good school’ in CPD’s forthcoming book Pushing our luck, look at the trend of inequality widening between public schools. In northern Sydney public schools are performing well, with results as good as private schools parents rush to find their children a place. Playgrounds are getting smaller and portable classes being brought in with the government announcing plans for two new schools. As this is happening public schools in more disadvantaged areas are loosing their potential high performers leaving the struggling kids with a larger disadvantage.

“When you group disadvantaged children in the same schools, it compounds their disadvantage. No surprise, then, that it is becoming harder and harder to improve the achievements of our lowest achieving students.

We know all this; the Gonski review laid it bare and helped raise concerns.”

In Pushing our luck Chris Bonnor and Jane Caro show how Australian schooling has been turned into a winner-takes-all competition, and what we can do about it. The reforms sparked by the Gonski Review could go some of the way towards fixing this situation, but more needs to be done.

Read the article at The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age

Support the release of Pushing our luck on StartSomeGood