The suburbs of Melbourne determine the score of your school

The suburbs shaded with red are the disadvantaged areas, while the light blue ones are rich. The yellow zones are somewhere between their socio-economic status.

"It does not matter who owns the school, it's where it is that matters," said lead author Crichton Smith.

The researchers mapped their badysis, showing that the best performing primary schools are largely clustered in affluent neighborhoods in central Melbourne, while below-average schools are on the outskirts of the city.

And the gap between different areas is widening, warns Nick Parr, co-author of the study.

Professor Parr said that children whose parents, who were unable to send them to a school in one of the richest regions, were increasingly forgotten about their education.

Peter Goss of the Grattan Institute said that schools in favored areas benefit from the fact that families share the same educational and professional backgrounds.

"If you are surrounded by underprivileged students, this tends to drag you down, so if you are surrounded by the advantaged students, it makes you go up," he said.

Schools in disadvantaged areas also face a higher proportion of students from distressed backgrounds and difficulty in attracting experienced teachers.

Dr. Goss also cited research conducted by the Grattan Institute in 2016 that found that the lowest-income students in the third year were about a year behind their preferred counterparts.

By the time these students reached Grade 9, this gap had widened and the most disadvantaged group was almost four years behind in mathematics.

The researchers noted, however, that the socio-economic gap between schools was not as strong in Victoria as in other states.

Of the 17 best-performing schools in the poorest suburbs of the country, they found that eight were in Melbourne.

According to Professor Parr, this could be explained by the fact that the suburbs of Melbourne were more favored and disadvantaged, especially in the west of the city, which would have an impact on the composition of the workforce. some schools.

"It could be a school that deals with it with its teaching practices and programs up to the fifth grade," Dr. Goss said.

Or, he said, this may be because they attracted less favored English-speaking students, whose parents had taught them to put a lot of effort into their education.

The badysis also shows that schools in Melbourne recorded fifth-grade NAPLAN reading scores higher than those of other states in 2016.

Nearly half of Melbourne's primary schools score above the national average. And 19% were below average, a proportion lower than all cities except Canberra.

The researchers used NAPLAN reading scores for the fifth grade as an indicator of school performance, explaining that it was an essential skill that underpinned 39, other learning. The areas were clbadified as favored or disadvantaged depending on a number of factors related to local residents, such as income, education, employment and access to the Internet.