Perceptions of public education in regional Australia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to better understand the negative image associated with public education as compared to catholic and independent schools in Australia. This is done by examining parents’ attitudes toward the three school sectors to determine the brand image parents perceive of Australian schools. The data used in this study was derived from 93 parents in Wollongong, NSW. Attitudes were elicited and compared across the three school sectors to examine significance differences between the three school sectors using ANOVA and Bonferroni correction analysis. Results indicate that the three school sectors had significantly different attributes that differentiated each school sector. The results revealed that the brand image of public schools tend to comprise of more negative attributes (e.g., poor academic environment) than positive attributes (e.g., multicultural environment). The literature review and results show that the overall brand image associations toward Australian public schools tend to be less favourable as compared to other school sectors.