Private Schooling and Public Achievement

Abstract

There are two contending explanations for the apparent public/private differences in educational outcomes—the ‘quality education’ argument versus the ‘selective-socioeconomic-recruitment’ explanation. The quality education argument explains these differences in terms of between-system differences in the quality of the education offered. The selective-socioeconomic-recruitment explanation suggests that between-system differences in outcomes have more to do with what students bring to school than with what they find there. These competing propositions are examined by asking whether attendance at a Catholic or non-Catholic private school provides a net benefit with regard to educational achievement and attainment. The answers come from additive models which control for a variety of family, individual and school variables in order to examine the net effect of school sector. The evidence presented suggests that a good part of the observed between-sector differences in performance is attributable to between-sector differences in student attributes—but not all. In the case of schooling, small between-sector differences in achievement remain, along with sizeable between-sector differences in Year 12 graduation rates. For higher education, between-sector differences in participation rates favour the graduates of non-government schools but sectoral differences in completion rates are negligible. It is suggested, in conclusion, that parents who invest in their children's education in this way may be getting a return on their investment, though probably not as much as they think.