
Russell Coker wrote:
On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:21:01 Andrew McGlashan wrote:
Private schools are a lot like many other modern day "products", the money is in the marketing, so you pay more for the product and quite often get nothing better in return except a warm fuzzy feeling that you must have bought the best (or better at least).
I think that private schools do provide a better service than government schools.
I did primary and high school in various state schools around the country, and matric in an early generation of IB at a Melbourne private school. The quality of teaching was *vastly* superior in the IB, but my strong impression was that the VCE students in the same school had things a lot worse -- hopeless teachers, much larger classes, and a lacklustre and bureacratic curriculum. The ancedotal evidence I've heard since suggests that now that IB has "settled in", it has been watered down a fair bit, too. Aside from the better quality teachers and smaller classes, there was absolutely nothing to recommend my private school experience over my state school experience. Well... if you want your kid to pass even if he shouldn't, then a private school is definitely the way to go. The private school I went to bent over backwards to ensure all their students passed, e.g. giving six month extensions on assignment due dates.