Public and private schools on Sydney's north shore have continued to achieve almost uniform high results in NAPLAN testing, a trend believed to be one factor driving the enrolments surge in local public schools.
The income that Wenona School, an independent school on the north shore, receives per student is almost three times what is received by Lindfield Public School. Yet the NAPLAN results achieved by their students are roughly the same.
Steph Croft, from the Northern Sydney Regional Council of Parents and Citizens Associations, said the My School data, first published in 2010, was helping to drive the surge in enrolments in the area's public schools, which has seen the highest growth of any region in Sydney over the last five years.
High achievers: Students at Lindfield Public School are performing just as well as their private school counterparts. Photo: Jacky Ghossein
''There's a group of people who are choosing schools off the My School website and moving houses to get into the area for certain schools,'' she said.
A snapshot by Fairfax Media of government and non-government schools in the north shore region shows high results were achieved regardless of school sector in the 2012 NAPLAN tests.
From the Sydney Church of England Grammar School, known as Shore, where fees tipped $25,000 in 2013, to the public Mosman High School and the Catholic systemic school Blessed Sacrament, children in most grades achieved test scores significantly above the national average in reading in both year 3 and year 5.
Yielding results: Joshua of Lindfield Public School puts his head down. Photo: Jacky Ghossein
The principal of Lindfield Public School, Craig Oliver, said he was not at all surprised his students were performing on par with their private school peers.
''If I was a parent of a child I was considering enrolling in a high-fee private school and I was making my decision on the basis of NAPLAN results alone, I would be considering the public school option was a very attractive one,'' he said.
''In terms of funding, we don't attract anything like the levels of funding the private schools do but we certainly do make the best of what we do have.''
He said many of the families at his school could afford a private school education but chose to stay in the public system.
The headmaster of Shore, Timothy Wright, said it was not surprising the whole area was performing well.
''It's a well-known fact in educational research that literacy and numeracy performance does broadly correlate with socio-economic status … because it correlates with such things as parent education and parent commitment to education,'' he said.
''Without having done a scientific poll, I'd be confident to say that most of the students in my school have parents both of whom went to university.''
He said schools in the area also tended to retain good teachers.
''Our staff turnover would be 3 [per cent] to 5 per cent in a typical year and I think stable staffing helps build strong academic cultures.''
All of the schools had a similarly high score on the My School's website's Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage, which uses a range of data to rate the education and affluence of a child's family, as well as whether the school is in a regional or remote area and proportion of indigenous students.
Dr Wright said he was happy to see public schools doing well but believed Shore offered points of difference outside NAPLAN measures. ''We would say our point of difference is in the breadth of our co-curricular and other activities that aren't necessarily available in all public schools.''
Helen Proctor, from the faculty of education and social work at the University of Sydney, said parents were looking for more than just strong academic results and were often influenced by behaviour, networking, facilities and discipline.
''Why does someone buy a top-level BMW when a Holden can do the job?'' she said.
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