Private schools can still hold up their heads

Given debates about school funding over the last 2 years as a result of the Gonski inquiry and report and related arguments about school effectiveness a recent news piece in The Australian by Justine Ferrari deserves comment.

In her article, titled ‘Catholic schools perform badly’ (October 16), Ferrari uses evidence from two research papers to mistakenly claim that Catholic schools, and non-government schools more generally, fail to perform as well as they should.

Referring to one of the research papers, written by Buly A. Cardak and Joe Vecci and published in the Economics of Education Review 37, Ferari writes, “It said for some students, attending a Catholic school has had a negative effect and ‘on average Catholic school students would achieve better outcomes in public schools’”.

Based on the second paper, by Chris Ryan from the University of Melbourne and also published in the above journal, Ferrari argues that the decline in performance of non-government schools in the international PISA test proves that such schools are no longer academically superior to government schools.

It goes without saying, if true, that such arguments would please non-government school critics who consistently claim that there is nothing academically superior about Catholic and independent schools when compared to government schools.

Ferrari is wrong to paint such a negative picture.  The Cardak and Vecci paper, instead of concluding that there is nothing superior about Catholic schools in relation to secondary school completion rates and tertiary entry and completion rates, admits that the evidence is far from definite.

Concerns about methodology and the complex nature of the research lead the two researchers to admit that there is “uncertainty” about conclusions reached and that the results are “difficult to interpret definitively”.

Given such caveats it is wrong to write, as Ferrari does, that Catholic school students would achieve better outcomes in public schools.   In fact, at one point, the authors state “these results point to the strong benefits arising from Catholic school attendance”.

While stating that one interpretation of their research might lead to the conclusion that the impact of Catholic schools is negative, the authors also admit that positive effects might range from 5 to 7%.

Instead of criticising Catholic schools for underachieving the first paper admits, especially given that such schools enrol high numbers of disadvantaged students and receive less funding than government schools, “Catholic schools are delivering very good outcomes”.

Given the relatively strong performance of Catholic schools the authors go on to say “the Catholic school sector may offer insights to policymakers and the public school sector to improve educational outcomes for more students”.

While focusing on academic outcomes, the two researchers also admit that enrolments in Catholic schools have increased dramatically and that on indicators like stricter discipline, the religious nature of schools and low tuition fees that parents appear happy to choose such schools for their children.

The second research paper Ferrari refers to as evidence that non-government schools are performing badly, by Chris Ryan from the University of Melbourne, tracks changes in the PISA test results over the years 2003, 2006 and 2009.

Over the period Ryan notes a significant decline in Australia’s performance and observes “falls in school performance were more apparent in private schools than in the government-run school system across Australia”.

What Ferrari fails to mention is that Ryan also notes the fall off in results “were apparent across the entire distribution of schools”.  No mention is also made of the fact that Australia’s test results for 2003 and 2006 were not disaggregated by school sector and as admitted by Ryan this “creates some difficulties for the analysis”.

To put it simply, if Australia’s 2009 PISA results are the first time school sectors can be identified, and Ryan has had to find some other means to identify sector results for 2003 and 2006, then the validity of the analysis is weakened.

One of the persistent arguments put by government schools activists for increased funding is that state schools face greater challenges and sometimes under perform because they enrol large numbers of disadvantaged low socioeconomic status (SES) students.

It’s significant that Ryan acknowledges the fact that as much of the enrolment growth in the non-government system, especially among independent schools, has been in low SES communities.

The decline in non-government school PISA results, instead of proving that such schools are performing badly – as implied by the heading to the Ferrari piece – might be because such schools are enrolling increased numbers of low SES background students.

Ferrari begins her piece by stating the “claims to academic superiority of private over public schools has been challenged” as a result of the 2 research papers.  One only needs to see the Year 12 results across Australia every year, where Catholic and independent school students predominate, to see how misleading such a statement is.