The Daily Telegraph reporting on the success of public schools reads: "... Hannah Wilson topped the state in senior science, beating competitors from private and public selective schools."
LOL! Whatever. As if our selective schools would let their students take Senior Science. Most of our students take the REAL sciences, like Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. And not General Maths either, (How can you even call that maths? It's like grape juice pretending to be wine.) but Advanced, Extension 1 and Extension 2.
I guess the main point the article was trying to make was that public highschools are becoming a force to be reckoned with academically, whether they are comprehensive or selective. 8 out of the 10 top schools in NSW are Public Selective Schools. Unfortunately, the highest rank a comprehensive high school holds is 56, every school ranked above that are either Selective or Private.
The great thing about selective schools is that if you work smart, or hard (depends on the situation), you should get the results you deserve. It's not about how much money the government or your parents are throwing at the school.
There is a debate on whether or not Selective schools should be discontinued. People have said that Selective schools place great pressure on students to perform well, and that they produce students that are awkward in social situations and only academically focused.
Well, sure there is pressure to perform, but selective schools can also provide a supportive environment as well. Selective schools provide a protective shell for students of an academic nature. Where else can you find students making lame Chem jokes and getting people who actually understand and appreciate the joke? Where else can you find groups of people who appreciate anime and manga as an art form, without being picked on, or ostracised, for it?
As for the lack of social skills, many students are able to get jobs, where we pick up the necessary skills to deal with a variety pf people. Many of our students go into Medicine, where competitive interview skills are required for admission. We have extra-curricular activities that foster teamwork and leadership while being extraordinarily fun.
Overall, I think the results speak for themselves. 18 out of the top 30 of the state are Selective schools. Good education that is low cost makes everybody happy.
2 comments:
I went to a Comprehensive school (A high school where everyone goes) It's often a complaint of some elements that the old system of selecting into Grammar schools (where the top 20% went) and secondary Modern schools (Where everyone else went) worked better.
I'm not sure. Within our school, selection was practised internally. We had 11 teaching sets in our year, ranked in order, for each subject. And the subjects you were entered for varied.
The sixth form attached to our school was one of the best state run sixth forms in the country- 80th. This in a school with 1,600 pupils in a fairly ordinary part of the UK- as in, kids from all backgrounds.
On the whole I'm glad I went there, it was good life training.
Well considering that the top 50 schools (out of over 500 schools in our state) are either (government) selective or private, I think in our state this system seems to work. It's not to say you can't get quality education in a comprehensive school, since my cousins (who are lawyers or accountants) managed to do fine in a comprehensive school.
I guess if the selection is practised internally, students who learn faster can do so in an appropriate environment, while the students with a slower learning pace are given more attention. I found this was the case with our mathematics class, where the high-performing students were placed in classes of 30, while the lower-achieving students were placed in classes of 20. So I'm not surprised that your school was ranked quite highly.
I suppose the main advantage of attending a comprehensive highschool would be the life-experience gained. I've actually been quite sheltered from the outside world, and that probably follows from the people I associated with at school, ie the highly focused academic high achievers, ie everyone. I'm hoping to rectify that at some stage.
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