Australian Education
Which Australian Private School?
Unless you or a family member has experience of a particular school this is not a trivial matter. Apart from assessing whether there are places available for your child and issues such as the academic performance of the school you also need to make an assessment as to whether the culture, environment and focus of the school will suit your child. That usually means a private visit to the school and discussions with senior teaching staff.
If you haven't any preference regarding which private school, then the website of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools (AHISA) - www.ahisa.com.au - is a good starting point; it provides both useful background information and links to individual school websites.
If you are trying to determine what schools are within a reasonable distance of where you intend to live, or work, then www.isd.com.au allows you to shortlist private schools on the basis of location, age of child, gender and religion.
Australian School Performance Rankings - "League Tables"
School Performance Rankings, or "League Tables" as they are called elsewhere in world such as in the UK, which attempt to measure and compare the relative performance of individual schools against a number of criteria, including academic performance, are not readily available in Australia. The various State government bodies do collect data of this nature but it is largely used for internal purposes and is not made public - although individual schools will be able to provide information showing their academic performance against Statewide averages. Most teacher unions remain opposed to the publication of such data on the premise that the information provides a "simplistic, narrow and sometimes historical view of school performance" which is too academically inclined.
However, this situation is likely to change in the short term with the Federal Government now tying educational funding to the provision and access to such information - with two States, Queensland and NSW, likely to start providing comparative, public data from 2007. At present two states, Western Australia and Victoria, do provide some data on the performance of schools in terms of academic results achieved at the final secondary school exam in each state. We provide access to that data in the downloads below:
Western Australia - School Performance Data
Victoria - School Performance Data
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