Does getting in actually change anything?
This is the question underneath the whole selective-entry effort, and it is usually answered with the destinations of students who got in — which proves nothing, because those students were already the sort who apply. Two Australian studies asked it properly, by comparing children who just made the cut-off with children who just missed. The answer is not the one the coaching market implies.
The short answer
Small at best. Two independent studies — one in Victoria, one in New South Wales — found that attending a selective school made little measurable difference to results, once you compare like-for-like students.
The estimates point to small positive effects at best on university entrance results from attending the selective schools. Overall, the small selective school effect appears to reflect the high levels of educational aspiration of both selective students as well as applicants who attended other schools.
Houng (2018), Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne. Thesis. Registered as TST-02.
The second clause is the finding. The aspiration was in the family and the child beforethe exam — it belonged equally to the applicants who did not get in and went elsewhere. The school did not create it; it collected it.
Why these two studies can say “caused”
Almost no claim in education can. The usual evidence for selective schools is that their graduates do well, which tells you about the students admitted rather than the schooling received. These studies use a regression-discontinuity design: they compare the children who scored just above the entry cut-off with those who scored just below. Those two groups are alike in ability, family and motivation to a degree no survey can match. The only systematic difference between them is the offer.
That is why a small measured effect here is more damaging to the “transformation” story than a large correlation is supportive of it.
New South Wales found the same thing, with one exception
I find that receiving an offer to attend a selective school has only scattered and mostly insignificant impacts on overall student achievement and participation in advanced coursework. I do find suggestive evidence that selective schools benefit low socioeconomic status students, but that such students are typically underrepresented in selective schools, which has implications for Gifted and Talented education policy.
Zen (2016), UNSW School of Economics. Thesis. Registered as TST-03.
The exception matters and should not be flattened. There is suggestive evidence of real benefit for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds — and those are precisely the students least represented in selective schools. So the honest summary is not “selective schools do nothing”. It is that they appear to do least for the families most likely to be paying for preparation, and most for the families least likely to be in the room.
And the structural argument is no better evidenced
The case for selective schooling does not rest only on outcomes. It rests on a mechanism — that grouping able students together helps them. An umbrella review published in August 2026, covering 17 meta-analyses and 397 primary studies, looked for the evidence and reported this:
No ability-grouping meta-analysis met the predefined criteria for best-evidence prioritization.
Ferrándiz et al. (2026), Frontiers in Education. Registered as FR-34.
Read that precisely, because it is easy to over-read. It does not say grouping fails. It says the evidence offered for it did not clear the review’s own quality bar — an absence of admissible evidence rather than evidence of absence. The same review found enrichment does have real effects, though its academic effect falls from g = 0.68 to 0.32 once corrected for publication bias, which is worth knowing whenever a programme quotes the larger number at you.
What this does and does not mean for your decision
- It is not an argument against sitting the exam.A selective school may suit your child for reasons these studies do not measure — peers, subject offerings, travel, temperament. The studies measure academic outcomes, not whether a child is happy.
- It is an argument against buying a transformation. If the case for two years of coaching rests on the school changing your child’s trajectory, the best available Australian evidence does not support that case.
- Both studies are theses, and one is nearly a decade old. TST-03 is 2016 and TST-03’s system is NSW, not Victoria. They agree with each other, which is the strongest thing that can be said for them, but neither is a randomised trial and neither was published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The version of the argument worth keeping
Preparing for a selective or scholarship exam is worth doing for what the preparation itself builds — reading closely, writing under time, holding an argument together. Those survive the result either way, and they are what the exam is a proxy for.
That is the honest case, and it is the one this practice makes. How selective entry works in Victoria sets out the process itself, and the scholarship guide is the free twenty-chapter version of the preparation.
Preparing anyway? Then prepare for the English, not the badge.
A twenty-minute discovery call about what your child’s writing is doing now — free, and without obligation.
Or read the free guide first — the scholarship guide →