Private schools no guarantee of higher NAPLAN scores, study finds. Education

Private schools no guarantee of higher NAPLAN scores, study finds

"We found that NAPLAN test scores of students from Catholic and other private schools did not statistically differ from those in public schools." Photo: Marco Del Grande

Children who attend private primary schools don't perform any better in NAPLAN tests than their peers at public schools, new research shows.

It was the children of a healthy birth weight, who grew up in higher socio-economic circumstances in homes filled with books and had mothers who didn't work long hours who performed best at NAPLAN.

The study authors said their findings, to be presented at a conference next month, debunked conventional wisdom that ''private schooling enables children to achieve better academic results''.

Community spirit: Privately educated Amy Miller has opted to send daughter Isabella to the local public school. Photo: Jacky Ghossein

''We found that NAPLAN test scores … of students from Catholic and other private schools did not statistically differ from those in public schools,'' the authors said.

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''Our finding seems to suggest that 'nature' provides a more consistent role than 'nurture' at affecting children's cognitive outcome in this young age group.''

For the study, the University of Queensland researchers matched the 2008 and 2010 NAPLAN results of 15,000 year 5 students and 11,000 year 3 students with data from a long-term study that is tracking Australian children from age four.

After controlling for factors like household income, health indicators and parent education level, researchers found there was no statistical difference in the academic achievement of children from similar backgrounds, regardless of which type of school they attended.

''People who are sending their kids to public schools can be confident they're not disadvantaging their kids by doing so,'' one of the researchers, professor of health economics Luke Connelly, said.

''It's not the type of school that changes [the result], it's the things that are being done for the child at home.''

But Professor Connelly said that didn't mean parents paying for primary school education were wasting their money. ''This is one measure of school performance. It's not indicative of the overall value of the school experience for kids and parents.''

Two-thirds of the children in the study attended public schools, while 20 per cent were educated in the Catholic system and the rest at independent schools.

Researchers found that compared with NSW children, Victorian children performed better at reading, and Queensland children performed better at numeracy. All the other states consistently recorded lower test results than NSW in NAPLAN.

Children who weighed less than 2.5 kilograms at birth achieved ''significantly lower'' test scores, especially in grammar and numeracy, with the researchers suggesting low birth weight correlated with longer term developmental delays.

Children whose parents had completed year 12 had significantly higher test scores across all subjects. Students whose mothers worked long hours did worse in all tests except numeracy.

''One explanation for this may be that children of young ages typically spend more time with mothers than fathers; perhaps mothers who work long hours make greater sacrifices of the amount of parental time their children receive,'' the study authors said.

Researchers found year 5 students attending Catholic schools performed significantly worse than those at public schools in all subjects except reading and writing.

However, Professor Connelly said they would have to wait to see how this cohort performed in year 7 before drawing conclusions.

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