Crystal Wong attended three of Melbourne’s most prestigious girls’ schools as her parents wanted to give her the best education. Yet even with knowledge of several schools, choosing a future high school for her daughter has been overwhelming.
“There are just unlimited things I feel like I need to know to decide,” Wong says.
She ended up touring 30 schools in the high school search for grade 1 student Arya.
Wong couldn’t find information on how schools performed in VCE in particular subjects such as sciences – data this masthead reveals in the Victorian Schools Guide.
The Age is examining VCE performance across the state as part of the launch of the guide, a new interactive dashboard that will allow parents and students to examine the performance of the state’s government, Catholic and independent schools.
The dashboard will be updated regularly and feature new sections in the future to help guide students and their families in school choices.
In choosing the right high school for Arya, Wong did things differently from her parents. She didn’t want to move from her eastern suburbs home, her budget didn’t extend to the most expensive options, and she wanted her daughter to attend a co-ed school.
Results played no small part. Arya enjoys science and has early ambitions to be a veterinarian.
“That’s really hard to get into,” Wong says. “I want to know if the school that I’m sending her to has that sort of track record of having past students being able to get into that course.”
Wong studied at Presbyterian Ladies College and St Catherine’s. She completed senior years at Lauriston, among the only schools offering Chinese and the International Baccalaureate at the time.
Wong became so intrigued by the schools she was looking into that she ended up touring about 30, and writing about the experience as blog posts on a website comparing Melbourne’s schools she now oversees. “It turned into a bit of a hobby,” she says.
Eventually, Wong’s choice came down to two independent schools. She settled on one further away, but with a working farm. “There’s not many schools that can say they have that,” she says.
But knowing whether she made the right choice will take years. “You don’t know until you get there,” she says.
Education consultant Paul O’Shannassy says the most difficult thing for parents is “deciphering the marketing spiel from the truth”.
If results are among their main motivations, he encourages parents to look mostly at VCE results rather than only NAPLAN, and consider whether scholarships, entrance exams and some students doing unscored VCE contribute to higher scores. “Or are they getting good results because they are doing good things?” he says.
Mother of three Lisa Grant toured six schools while searching for the right fit for her children.
“My biggest thing is choosing the right school for each individual child,” she says. “One school that suits one child may not suit another.”
Her eldest son, a keen swimmer, was at a government secondary school where she didn’t feel he was reaching his full potential. She moved him to Mentone Grammar, along with her more academic younger son. She describes the co-ed school as one for all-rounders.
Her daughter, the youngest child, said she did not want to go to school with boys, and now attends Mentone Girls Grammar, where Grant believes she has the confidence to put herself forward. She and her husband did not expect to send three children to private schools.
“It certainly has hit us very hard financially” she says. “But I don’t regret a cent. My eldest son ended up with a 96.25 ATAR and a full academic scholarship to uni, covering off all his HECS.”
While the results paid off, Grant’s school choice was based on broader qualities.
“What was important to me was the demographic fit, and then that it fit their interests, their needs and their capabilities, and their ability to put themselves forward and fit into things.”
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Jackson Graham is an education reporter at The Age. He was previously an explainer reporter.Connect via email.
