Independent, Catholic or Government schools

Notes on “Choice between Government, Catholic and Independent schools: Culture and community rather than class” by Jonathan Kelley and M.D.R. Evans

The Australian Social Monitor, Vol. 7(2), 2004

Factors affects attendance at independent or catholic or government schools???

• Father’s occupation
• Income
• Parent’s education
• Trade union membership
• Religious affiliation
• Political affiliation
• Gender
• Family structure
• Population where family lives

Farm families more likely to send their children to independent schools as schooling was only available to Year 8 in country areas during the 1950’s so they turned to independent boarding schools p.52

“Parents education is the only class related variable in our model that has a significant effect on the probability of sending one’s children to Catholic school, but even it is not large. P. 37

Class differences are larger when analyzing independent schools but these are a matter of parental education and occupation rather than parental income. P. 38

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Is this different now? Interesting to look at more studies in this area to see if they achieve the same/similar results as this...that income does not hugely influence a parent's decision to send their children to catholic or more significantly, an independent school. Parental education is more of an influencing factor - is this still the case?