| I come from the state of NSW (in Australia), the state with this program, and was also one of the students from selective schools. It is important to note that in Sydney, Australia: it isn't only the public school system which have selective schools, but there exists private schools where academic exams are required to gain entrance (see Sydney Grammar School). There are a lot of [selective schools; not just one or two, but 46](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selective_high_schools...)! You can see in the implementation that some are full selective, and others are partially selective. Furthermore in primary school there are also [opportunity class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_class) which is also for gifted students. All of these schools are partially selective with around half the spots of high school. My observation from these schools are that the _location_ of these schools don't matter much. Students will travel from the other side of Sydney to attend any of these schools! For example, there would be a lot of students from the south-west Sydney attending school in North Sydney. However, segregation based on academic abilities do yield some...results which I have also read about in the US: * Areas of top selective schools and top OC schools will generally yield higher asian population.
* Schools will tend to have a higher asian population Also (unsurprisingly) these schools have dominated university entrance exams, with the median mark of the top school (James Ruse Agricultural School) typically well within the top 1% of all exam-takers within the state. |
In practice, the selective school places are awarded to the children of parents who are willing to send their kids to coaching college throughout years 4 and 5. Hence the higher asian population. Actually having a high IQ (my two children were tested by a leading psychologist above 99.8% and 99.9% of the population for example) doesn't get you there.
And slightly worse -- if you are smart and are accelerated, then you hit high school below the age range for which you can sit the selective test.
The result is that schools such as James Ruse underperform: when the candidature were all in the top 1-2% at year 7, there are plenty of year 12 students who don't get even in the top 5%.
But in principle it works out very well. The teachers can run classes at a rate more appropriate for the students, bullying is less prevalent, etc. So it's definitely worth doing (for the students) if the entrance criteria are half-way sane.
The effect it has on the students who don't get into selective school though is a bit sad. It's also depressing for the teachers at comprehensive schools who may be working just as hard as those at the selective schools, but won't get rewarded from having highly successful students.