Selective high schools in Australia are both popular and controversial. Many more children seek enrolment in them than gain entry.
Public commentary since the late 1990s has accused these schools of being both hijacked by private coaching colleges, and racially unbalanced — enrolling disproportionate numbers of “Asian” students.
To properly understand the nature of selective schools today, you have to go back to when they first opened.
Why do we have selective schools?
Selective schools have never operated in isolation from broader historical forces — including Australia’s connected histories of racial exclusion and immigration.
The selective school system in New South Wales, for example, which has the largest concentration and longest history of selective schooling, is a relic of when secondary schooling was the destination of only a minority of young people, mostly from the middle or upper classes.
Secondary schooling was not universal in Australia before the 1960s, and it was only in the 1980s that everyone had the opportunity to complete Year 12.
The NSW selective high schools system was founded between the 1880s and the 1910s.
The schools were to offer students a meritocratic “ladder of opportunity”. That is, they would be open to everyone, regardless of wealth or social class, so long as academic entry requirements were met. This, and the absence of religious criteria, set them apart from private schools.
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