Do Catholic and Independent schools "add-value'' to students' Tertiary Entrance Performance? Evidence from longitudinal population data

Abstract

In this article, school sector differences in tertiary entrance performance were examined using longitudinal data from the state of Victoria in Australia for 2011. Analysis of students Tertiary Entrance Aggregate, from which the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank is derived, revealed non-trivial effect sizes of sector on performance. Results showed that students in Catholic and Independent schools performed at 0.24 and 0.38 standard deviations higher than their peers in the government sector once socioeconomic status, Year 9 performance in the National Assessments of Performance - Literacy and Numeracy, gender and language background had been controlled for. In other words, the results demon..