FEW children of recent migrants are entering Sydney’s high-fee private schools, which remain the preserve of Australians from English-speaking backgrounds.
At many of the city’s high-fee independent schools less than 10 per cent of students have a parent who speaks a language other than English. Trinity, MLC and Meriden – all in the inner west – are the only high-fee privates where more than half the student body comes from non-English-speaking backgrounds.
Nearly half the private high schools in Sydney enrol more than 80 per cent of their students from English-speaking backgrounds, according to an analysis of figures published on the federal government’s My School website.
via The white bread playground: top private schools shun ethnic diversity.
I have attended a Generation Next Seminar / Presentation and I found it both enlightening and helpful. I have at time on and off followed the emails and blogs sent to me through Generation next. I follow these components because I have found them informed and based on credible evidence and experience with some thoroughly exploration of the topics. Unfortunately I have today been disappointed and thus now question previous information gained through Generation Next The headline of one of the blogs read ‘The white bread playground: top private schools shun ethnic diversity’ and through further reading found the article both superficial and without much depth and this is odd for me as I am a supporter of public education and work within this environment. I then for the first time looked at where this article originated and was even more disappointed when I discovered it was lifted from the Sydney Morning Herald, which for so many reasons (too many of which to list) lacks credibility. I am left in two minds now as to the credibility of Generation next, which saddens me as it become increasingly hard to find good credible sources of information
Dear Discover
My apologies for the disappointing experience that you had with this article.
The aim of the Generation Next blog, like the seminars, is to provide useful and thought provoking information. We do not always support the views and opinions of the articles that are posted on our blog, rather, we hope that by providing our readers with a breadth of ideas, perspectives and information that they will come to their own conclusions about a particular topic, issue or article. As far as the credibility of the Generation Next Blog and Seminars are concerned, we encourage our readers and audience to critically appraise each and every blog, lecture, idea, concept, assertion and paradigm for themselves. We do our best to provide a starting point for this process, wherever possible we provide evidence based information, however important issues do not always begin with an evidence base!
Sometimes, as is the case with the article on which you are commenting, we post articles to alert our readers to what other commentators are saying “out there” in the discussion space. By providing the link back to the source of the original article the reader can determine the intellectual provenenance of its ideas and assertions, hence the credibility of the article, for themselves. We agree that newspapers are not always the best source of information but they are a profoundly useful way of sharing ideas and provoking discussion. By posting this article we were not necessarily seeking to endorse the view of the author so much as to invite opposing views from our readers. Without doubt the title is a controversial one, as are the ideas in the article, but please consider letting us know more specifically why you felt the article contradicts your views!
We have never and will never insist that our readers or audience accept our content blindly. Rather, we invite them to join us on a journey as we set out to challenge assumptions, explore new perspectives and examine novel solutions to the many challenges arrayed against the mental health and wellbeing of our young people.
Please do consider writing a rebuttal to the article that you were disappointed with….we would be most happy to consider it for publication!