CATH NEWS REPORT: The quality of the teaching, not socio-economic advantage, is why Catholic schools have outperformed public schools in the 2009 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores, the Catholic Education Office in Sydney told The Catholic Weekly.
For the first time, the survey results have been broken into three sectors – government, Catholic and independent schools.
Students from independent schools performed significantly better than from Catholic and government schools, while Catholic schools scored significantly higher than their counterparts in the government sector.
Dr Sue Thomson from the Australian Council for Educational Research told the Sydney Morning Herald these differences were dependent on socio-economic background.
"Students in the independent or Catholic school sectors bring with them an advantage from their socio-economic background that is not as strongly characteristic of students in the government sector," she said.
Dr Dan White, executive director of Catholic schools in the Sydney archdiocese, refutes this: "Many Catholic schools are in the most socio-economically disadvantaged areas. Many of our families experience serious financial hardship".
"Many of the best performing schools in the archdiocese of Sydney are located in low socio-economic areas. This is because as a system of schools, resources are allocated to where the needs are greatest. That is how it has always been and will continue to be.
"The research is clear: it is the quality of the teaching in the classroom that determines how effective students learn.
"To simply equate overall academic performance to socio-economic factors diminishes the achievements of many schools from low socio-economic areas."
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