Some of Sydney\u2019s most prestigious private schools have become Anglo-Australian ghettos as the education of high school students across the city is increasingly segregated along ethnic lines.<\/p>\n
Students with a language background other than English made up 52 per cent of all enrolments in Sydney\u2019s public high schools in 2011 while the share in independent schools was just 22 per cent, research by the University of Technology Sydney\u2019s Dr Christina Ho has found. The proportion in Catholic schools was 37 per cent. \u201cSchools are becoming more segregated in terms of both class and ethnicity,\u201d Dr Ho said. \u201cMore and more students are going to schools that do not represent the range of people in their neighbourhood, but rather a select group.\u201d<\/p>\n
The segregation trend was very pronounced on Sydney\u2019s lower North Shore, home to some of Australia\u2019s highest fee private schools. Ho identified 11 private high schools in the area where the proportion of students from language backgrounds other than English was at or below 20 per cent. Queenwood School for Girls in Mosman had the lowest share (2 per cent) followed by St Ignatius College Riverview in Lane Cove (5 per cent) and Monte Sant\u2019 Angelo Mercy College in North Sydney (6 per cent).<\/p>\n
However, in two selective public high schools in the area \u2013 North Sydney Boys and North Sydney Girls \u2013 the proportion of students from a language background other than English was above 90 per cent. At the nearby comprehensive public schools Chatswood High and Willoughby Girls High the proportion was 76 per cent and 57 per cent respectively. \u201cYou can walk between some of these schools in a few minutes and yet one is like a white bubble and the other is like a non-white bubble,\u201d Dr Ho told the Herald. \u201cIts astounding that this can be happening in the same suburb like say, North Sydney.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Ho raised concerns about the lack of cultural diversity in north shore private schools because they play such an important role in educating the children of Australia\u2019s cultural and political elite, and are sites where powerful networks are forged. \u201cThe fact that there are so few students from language backgrounds other than English raises questions about the ethnic exclusivity of these networks, with ramifications for the composition of Australia\u2019s future political, cultural and economic leaders,\u201d she wrote in an article titled \u2018People like us\u2019: School choice, multiculturalism and segregation in Sydney published in The Australian Review of Public Affairs. The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and several members of the Federal cabinet including Treasurer Joe Hockey and Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce attended private schools identified in the research.<\/p>\n
Dr Ho\u2019s research, which used data published on the MySchool website, also revealed a significant difference in the ethnic make-up of private and public schools in the Burwood-Strathfield region. Public high schools in that area had an average of 80 per cent of students with a language background other than English while private schools had about half that figure at 42 per cent. Dr Ho said government policies to promote school \u201cchoice\u201d had been the main factor driving ethnic segregation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a multicultural society like Australia, it is unnatural and unhealthy for our schools to be so ethnically divided,\u201d says Dr Ho. \u201cIn private schools that are overwhelmingly Anglo-dominated, students are not being given sufficient opportunity to develop the cross-cultural awareness and skills that can only be developed through everyday encounters and friendships with people from other backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Ho also said the very high proportion of non-Anglo students in selective high schools \u201craised questions\u201d about whether they were being shunned by Anglo-Australian families.<\/p>\n
Source: Sydney Morning Herald<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some of Sydney\u2019s most prestigious private schools have become Anglo-Australian ghettos as the education of high school students across the city is increasingly segregated along ethnic lines. Students with a language background other than English made up 52 per cent of all enrolments in Sydney\u2019s public high schools in 2011 while the share in independent … Continue reading “Sydney’s private schools have become white ghettos”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":20156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[837,12297,157,1474,12296],"class_list":["post-20155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-australia","tag-cultural-rights","tag-racism","tag-white-flight","tag-white-ghetto"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/sydneyschools.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20158,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20155\/revisions\/20158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}