Shopping for schools or shopping for peers: public schools and catchment area segregation

Figures & data

Table 1. The catchment areas and surrounding public high schools.

Name of public high school	Distance from catchment area Wallace (km)	Popular, rejected or balanced	Enforced catchment area (zoned)
Addison high	3.7	Balanced	Zoned
Casey high	5.3	Rejected	Not zoned
Bailey high	6.0	Popular	Zoned
Dale high	6.8	Rejected	Not zoned
Harvest high	7.8	Rejected	Not zoned
Name of public high school	Distance from catchment area Reagan (km)	Popular, rejected or balanced	Enforced catchment area (zoned)
Raphael high	1.9	Rejected	Not zoned
Morris high	6.0	Rejected	Not zoned
Ferris high	6.6	Rejected	Not zoned
Avery high	6.8	Popular	Zoned
Cecil high	7.4	Popular	Zoned

Table 2. Data-sets and description.

Data	Description	Number
Australian Bureau of Statistics socio-demographic statistical data (median weekly household income, country of birth, religion)	Ten catchment areas with public high schools, and two catchment areas without a public high school	12 catchment areas and three variables
Statistical data – NAPLAN	Standardized test scores (year 9) for five domains	10 schools and five testing domains (year 9) for each school
Interviews	Interviews with ten parents living in the Reagan catchment area	10 face-to-face in-depth interviews
Letters/emails to policy-makers	Letters/emails written by parents living in the Wallace catchment area (distributed and freely available online)	38 letters written by Wallace residents

Figure 1. Median weekly level of gross household income by school catchment area: rejected, balanced or popular school.

Table 3. Country of birth according to catchment area.

	Catchment area	Australia (%)	UK (%)	Vietnam (%)	Born elsewhere/country of birth not stated (%)	India (%)	China (%)
R	Morris high	38	1	21	20	5	3
R	Raphael high	41	2	9	22	7	5
R	Ferris high	45	2	11	20	7	2
R	Casey high	47.4	1.0	1.0	16.0	3.0	1.0
R	Dale high	54.0	2.0	1.0	14.0	5.2	2.0
R	Harvest high	55.9	2.0	2.0	12.0	4.0	3.0
P	Avery high	57	4	1	12	1	6
N/A	Wallace catchment	60.3	2.0	1.0	11.0	2.0	2.0
B	Addison high	61.0	3.0	1.0	12.0	2.0	2.0
N/A	Reagan catchment	66	4	3	10	2	1
P	Bailey high	68.9	4.0	1.0	8.0	2.0	2.0
P	Cecil high	74	7	0	7	1	0

Figure 2. Country of birth by school catchment area (Australia, UK and India only).

Table 4. Religious affiliation, by catchment area.

	Catchment	Christianity (%)	Buddhism (%)	Hinduism (%)	Islam (%)	No religion (%)
R	Raphael high	33	11	6	6	26
P	Avery high	40	5	2	2	38
R	Morris high	40	20	3	8	16
B	Addison high	40	3	2	5	39
P	Bailey high	44	2	1	1	41
N/A	Reagan catchment	48	4	1	2	34
R	Ferris high	51	11	4	5	15
N/A	Wallace catchment	52	2	2	8	25
R	Dale high	54	3	4	16	12
P	Cecil high	60	1	1	1	28
R	Harvest high	61	3	3	6	16
R	Casey high	61	2	2	24	7

Figure 3. Religious affiliation according to school catchment area (‘No Religion’ and Islam).

Figure 4. Standardized test results and academic performance, by school (2012).