How do learning environments vary by school sector and socioeconomic composition? Evidence from Australian students

Abstract

We examine how students’ perspectives of their learning environments vary between private and public schools in Australia. Previous research has shown that educational outcomes do not vary by school sector in most countries after controlling for student social background. Little is known, however, about the ways in which different students’ educational experiences vary across sectors. Australia is a good case study for examining this question, because it has one of the largest private school sectors in the world. We used a large and nationally representative dataset to compare sector differences across five measures of learning environments while accounting for the average socioeconomic composition of the school. Very few differences large enough to be considered educationally substantive were found between sectors. On two measures, however, student perspectives varied substantially within sectors and across school socioeconomic contexts. Overall, classroom disciplinary climate varied the most across school sectors and socioeconomic contexts, and teacher scaffolding and structuring strategies varied the least.

Educational outcomes among children with type 1 diabetes: Whole‐of‐population linked‐data study

“…Educational outcomes of children in private and public schools have shown to be similar after adjusting for socioeconomic composition. 55 It is not the school-sector, rather socioeconomic composition that confounds the association between T1D and educational outcomes, therefore having no data on private schools is unlikely to bias our estimate.…”

Do disadvantaged schools have poorer teachers? Rethinking assumptions about the relationship between teaching quality and school-level advantage

“…The few studies that use student evaluations across socio-educational schooling contexts in Australia show mixed results. Using a large and nationally representative dataset, Perry et al ( 2016 ) found few substantive differences between advantaged and disadvantaged contexts. In particular, “teachers’ use of structuring and scaffolding strategies, one of the main measures of effective teaching, varies very little across school contexts” (Perry et al, 2016 , p. 186).…”

“…Using a large and nationally representative dataset, Perry et al ( 2016 ) found few substantive differences between advantaged and disadvantaged contexts. In particular, “teachers’ use of structuring and scaffolding strategies, one of the main measures of effective teaching, varies very little across school contexts” (Perry et al, 2016 , p. 186). Such evidence suggests that teaching quality across socio-educational contexts may be more consistent than commonly assumed.…”

“…This stratification has been propelled by inequitable models of school funding and a proliferation of school choice policies fuelled by a neoliberal education agenda (Bonnor & Shepherd, 2017 ; Kenway, 2013 ; Perry, 2018 ). As a consequence, Australia now has one of the largest private education sectors in the world (Dinham, 2015 ; Perry et al, 2016 ), and invests well above the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average in the private education sector (OECD, 2020 ). Such investment contributes to the perpetuation of one of the most highly segregated education systems in the OECD (Bonnor & Shepherd, 2017 ; OECD, 2018 ) and to stark resourcing differences between schools and school sectors (Bonnor & Shepherd, 2017 ; Rowe & Perry, 2020 ).…”

Dreifing efnahags- og menntunarauðs meðal foreldra í skólahverfum höfuðborgarsvæðisins 1997–2016

“…Markaðsvirði skóla markast af stétta-og menningarlegu samhengi skólans (Ball, Bowe & Gewirtz 1996;Bernelius & Vaattovaara 2016;Roda & Wells 2013;Yoon, Lubienski & Lee 2018) og í þeim borgum sem misskipting og fátaekt hefur aukist hefur uppruna-og stéttbundin aðgreining milli hverfa og skóla einnig aukist (Lipman 2008). Þetta raeðst einnig af því að árangursmunur milli skóla eykst þar sem auður foreldra skapar skólanum forskot (Perry & Francis 2010;Perry, Lubienski & Ladwig 2016). Lítið er til af rannsóknum sem varpa ljósi á þessa þróun hérlendis, en samkvaemt nýlegum gögnum frá Reykjavíkurborg eru sterkust tengsl milli háskólamenntunar foreldra og námsárangurs á samraemdum prófum af þeim bakgrunnsbreytum sem borgin skoðar (Helgi Grímsson & Guðrún Mjöll Sigurðardóttir 2019) og nýlega var sýnt fram á að verulegur munur er á námsárangri 15 ára nemenda eftir því hvort þau eiga grunnskólamenntaða eða háskólamenntaða foreldra.…”