Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemCatholic higher education in Victoria : a survey based upon the careers of matriculation students, 1950 to 1955( 1966)The survey was based upon a complete census of the students from Victorian Catholic schools who presented for Matriculation between 1950 and 1958, and followed their careers until the end of 1964. The-first part compared the results of the Catholic and of the other schools in Victoria taken together. At Matriculation level, the students from the Catholic schools performed at least as satisfactorily as the students from the other schools. This was,due, however, to the boys rather than the girls, whose results were less satisfactory, than those of the other girls. At university level, the Catholic results in the first year examinations, as far as the limited data permit one to judge, appeared to be below the level of the other students; but when all years were taken into account; there was no significant difference in overall performance of the Catholic and other students. The second part of the survey studied the factors that determined the success or failure of the Catholic schools, and comparisons were made solely between Catholic schools. There was no significant difference between the results of Catholic boy and girl students in their best three subjects in a single presentation for Matriculation, nor between their pass-rates in the first or first three years in the university. The unmatched teaching institutes showed significant differences within each sex division in the Matriculation, but practically none in the first year and in the first three years in the university. The significant differences even at Matriculation, however, tended to disappear, when the institutes were matched on other circumstances influencing achievement. Finally, individual schools showed significant differences in Matriculation results within each sex division, but these tended to disappear in the first and first three years' university results. Significant differences between the results of those presenting for the first time and those for the second time, in favour of the latter, were frequently observed at Matriculation level but scarcely at all in the university. Among the other circumstances influencing achievement, at Matriculation level, socio-economic status was significant for boys' schools, in favour of the higher levels, but not for girls' schools. Size of Matriculation class was significant for boys' schools, in favour of larger classes (20 or more, compared with 10 to 19), but not for the corresponding larger classes in girls' schools (10 or more, compared with 1 to 9). Locality (metropolitan, urban, rural) was not significant for boys' schools, but it was for the girls', in favour of the metropolitan compared with the urban schools. Practically no significance was found in accommodation (boarding compared with day schools, or in educational classification (A and B class schools). At university level, the only circumstance that proved significant was size of class, in favour of schools with larger Matriculation classes among the boys (20 or more, compared with 10 to 19), and with smaller classes among the girls (1 to 9, compared with 10 to 19). On the whole, over the triennia, the standard of results for both male and female schools appeared to be improving significantly.
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ItemSocial area indicators and educational achievement( 1982)This study was concerned with the development and validation of a national indicator of educational disadvantage which would be suitable for guiding resource allocation decisions associated with the Disadvantaged Schools Program in Australia. The national indicator was constructed by using a series of stepwise regression analyses in order to obtain a linear combination of census based descriptions of school neighbourhoods which would be highly correlated with school mean achievement scores. A correlational investigation of the properties of this indicator showed that it was an appropriate tool for the identification of schools in which there were high proportions of students who (1) had not mastered the basic skills of Literacy and Numeracy, (2) displayed behavioural characteristics which formed barriers to effective learning, and (3) lived in neighbourhoods having social profiles which were typical of communities suffering from deprivation and poverty. A theoretical model was developed in order to estimate the optimal level of precision with which indicators of educational disadvantage could be used to deliver resources to those students who were in most need of assistance. This model was used to demonstrate that resource allocation programs which employ schools as the units of identification and funding must take into account the nature of the variation of student characteristics between and within schools. The technique of factor analysis was employed to investigate the dimensions of residential differentiation associated with the neighbourhoods surrounding Australian schools. Three dimensions emerged from these analyses which were congruent with the postulates of the Shevky- Bell Social Area Analysis model. The interrelationships between these dimensions and school scores on the national indicator of educational disadvantage presented a picture of the 'social landscape' surrounding educationally disadvantaged schools in Australia as one in which there were: high concentrations of persons in the economically and socially vulnerable position of having low levels of educational attainment and low levels of occupational skill, low concentrations of persons living according to the popular model of Australian family life characterized by single family households, stable families, and separate dwellings, high concentrations of persons likely to have language communication problems because they were born in non-English speaking countries.