Daryl wrote:The undisputed top secondary school in our state is a state school. Houses in its catchment area cost $100k more than their equivalent elsewhere.
My grandkids go to a country state primary school, and both were recently assessed as Mensa eligible.
A good state system can work well.
Oh yes, no doubt about that, and the problems that came with vouchers here isn´t really even that private can´t be good either.
To start with, local government are required to provide education to all that do not go elsewhere, and get the vouchers for those.
However, what it means in reality is that they never know ahead how many students they will have, which also means they have no way of predicting how much cash they have to pay for it.
So while private schools can easily skim a profit, local government often whiplash between not enough money and not enough students.
Then also something that has previously been tentatively established, that kids actually benefit from a wider mix of ability for classes, it´s pretty much confirmed in the last decade here, smart parents send their kids to the "popular" schools, and what may be surprising is that putting all the bright students in one place, the middlings in another and the rest in a third place, it hurts the actual results of all 3 groups, with the smart kids being the ones dropping the most in results.
And that´s just two of the obvious problems that has come up, there´s much much more.
But it would be extremely difficult to reverse now, so it will hopefully get patched up and improved, maybe even within my lifetime.
