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If you are single, this may not interest you yet. Statistically though, and partially due to the fact that family migration is usually favored than individual migration, Filipino migrants in Australia are generally couples, or couples with at least one child. It is thus important to know the basics of sending your child to school.

As with the Philippines, there are two types of schools in Australia: public schools and private schools. Public schools are, as you may guess, run by the government while private schools are run by private entities, such as churches, religious congregations and the like. Public school education in Australia, however, is generally a lot better than both public and private school education in the Philippines.

Of the OECD countries, Australia ranked 6th in PISA 2009 (Programme for International Student Assessment). In the UNDP 2011 Human Development Report, the Education Index for Australia is 0.981, which is among the highest in the world, even higher than that of the United States’ 0.939. This can be compared with the Philippines’ Education Index of 0.684. In the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) 2007, Australia is ranked 13th. Unfortunately, the Philippines did not participate in TIMSS 2007. But in TIMSS 1999, the Philippines ranked 3rd– from the bottom, worldwide!   Lest we stray from our topic, let’s go back to Australian schools.

In Australia, all children aged 6 or above must be sent to school. Since children do not turn 6 all at the same time, specific rules vary in each of the 8 Australian states and territories. There is a good summary in Wikipedia, which you can read from this link.

To quote from the information published by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, “Schooling in Australia typically lasts 13 years. The preparatory preschool year is commonly taken, but is not compulsory, and most children begin their schooling around five years of age. Primary schooling lasts six or seven years and secondary schooling entails a further five or six years of study. School education is mandatory until age 15 or 16, depending on the state or territory.”

If you have children of school age, the next step would be to find the suitable school for them. School location, or accessibility of public transportation to and from school, would probably be foremost in your checklist, and if they were, you should have considered the same when choosing your new address.  Aside from these, however, you may want to find a good school in terms of the quality of instruction, and the profile of students attending the school, for these will be the environment where your child will learn and grow up.

In 2010, the Sydney Morning Herald published a ranking of primary schools in NSW. Click here to view the report, or check out the Top 10 listed below (based on Year 5 assessment):

  1. Sydney Grammar School – Edgecliff Preparatory School, Paddington (47)
  2. Sydney Grammar School – St Ives Preparatory School, St Ives (24)
  3. St Francis’ School, Paddington (68)
  4. St Mary’s Preparatory School, North Sydney (28)
  5. Artarmon Public School, Artarmon (13)
  6. John Colet School, Belrose (63)
  7. Woollahra Public School, Woollahra (80)
  8. Mosman Church of England Preparatory School, Mosman (6)
  9. Abbotsleigh, Wahroonga (16)
  10. SCEGGS, Darlinghurst (38)

The number in parenthesis after the school name is the school ICSEA, or the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage, a “scale that enables meaningful comparisons to be made across schools. The variables used in calculating a value on the ICSEA scale include student-level data on the occupation and education level of parents/carers, and/or socio-economic characteristics of the areas where students live, whether a school is in a metropolitan, regional or remote area, proportion of students from a language background other than English, as well as the proportion of Indigenous students enrolled at the school.” (See the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority for details). In other words, putting it bluntly without regard to political correctness, the higher the ICSEA ranking, the better the community socio-educational advantage: students in the high ICSEA ranking schools come from families with better education, better work, and better homes, hence theirs is an environment more conducive for learning.

When sending your kids to school, the foremost consideration then, should be the quality of education, measured by the performance of students in the national exams, and the quality of the crowd, the very people with whom your children will interact for most of the next 12 years, measured by the ICSEA rank. Before you think that public schools dominate the list above, consider looking at the Top 100. Public schools are just as good as private schools. Case in point is the HSC results for secondary schools, consistently topped by a public school. Note, however, that there are ‘selective’ public schools in Australia, NSW particularly. These ‘selective’ public schools are similar to the public science high schools in the Philippines.

For the Top 10 secondary schools, results from the 2011 HSC (Higher School Certificate) published by SMH lists the following:

  1. James Ruse Agricultural High School
  2. North Sydney Boys High School
  3. Baulkham Hills High School
  4. Sydney Boys High School
  5. North Sydney Girls High School
  6. Sydney Girls High School
  7. Hornsby Girls High School
  8. Fort Street High School
  9. Moriah College
  10. Northern Beaches Secondary College

Please click here for the complete list.

These are merely guides, and in the end, the choice is yours. You do not need to seek out the Top 10 schools, but maybe there is wisdom in putting your child in a school with decent results. Otherwise, why did you come to Australia at all if you have no plans of providing something better for your children?