DIAGNOSTICO INSTITUCIONAL DE LA SECRETARIA DE SALUD DEPARTAMENTAL

Schools use their marketing as a means to brand themselves, and to use this branding to help to differentiate themselves from other schools. However, lower ICSEA schools are much more likely to make explicit use of their school mottos, logos and emblems than are other school sectors. This is particularly true since school logos often appear on school uniforms and these schools are the most likely to show students in uniform. Nevertheless, they are also the most likely to use mottos, logos and school emblems as a unifying motif in their marketing.

School mottos show the value the school places upon particular forms of behaviour – that is, the motto encapsulates what the school holds to be an exemplar of what the school is seeking to inculcate in its students. This chapter has shown that the mottos schools choose are not random, but rather related to a school’s social position. The lower a school’s ICSEA score, the more likely its motto will focus on individual student effort as the basis for success. Higher ICSEA government school mottos stress community or team effort. Non-elite school mottos reflect the religious affiliations of the school, while elite schools focus both on religious themes (frequently their mottos are in Latin and contain a reference to the Bible) or wisdom and passion. This

structure is repeated throughout the sample – running almost in a spiral from a focus on the individual in working class schools, through to community and team efforts in middle class schools, then to abstract self-actualisation in the ruling class schools.

This pattern was similarly discussed in Connell’s (Connell et al 1982) classic study of Australian schooling.

Value statements were only found in the government schools in the sample. Again, when these were arranged by ICSEA score, the below average schools stressed respect while the above average schools stressed teamwork. It was mainly above average government schools that had value statements, and such statements are most closely associated with white collar employers in the service sector – that is, the likely career path for these children.

Victorian schools are all required to participate in Australia wide testing known as NAPLAN in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Yet very few schools mentioned these tests or the results the schools obtained in them. This is interesting as the results of these tests are intended as a means of providing objective measures to compare schools (ACARA 2016). Academic performance, particularly in relation to Australian Tertiary

Admission Rank (ATAR) scores (which rank students’ academic achievement over their two final years of high school) are mostly only discussed in the marketing materials of above average government schools. Below average government schools rarely mention the results their students achieve, but are much more likely than average to discuss the subject options they provide students. Elite private schools rarely discuss the results they obtain in their marketing either. However, while below average government schools are likely to have relatively poor overall results, elite non-government school parents are likely to expect the highest results in these schools anyway (something they are paying the large fees this charge for) and so these results, consistently among the best in the state, would be and expectation, rather than a distinguishing feature for such schools.

All schools stress that they provide an excellent curriculum that meets student need, however, once again, when arranged by ICSEA score, distinct patterns occur. Elite schools are likely to spend significant space in their promotional material discussing the various curricular options they provide. They often offer the International

Baccalaureate, but this is certainly not the only reference to special curriculum

options in such schools. Frequently, these options are couched in terms that are almost incomprehensible, not unlike the promises made in advertising more generally in relation to other expensive products.

Non-elite non-government schools are less likely to discuss curriculum per se, but do spend significant time discussing their religious education programs. Since many of these schools have a direct relationship with a religious denomination, such

foregrounding might be expected, however, it must also be noted that many of the elite schools also have a relationship with a religious denomination, and yet this is not highlighted in their marketing in anything like the same manner. The schools to be in direct competition with Non-elite government schools are likely to be above average government schools. In this it might be worth remembering that John Howard (Australian Prime Minister 1996-2007) suggested that the reason parents chose non- government schools “was because these offered clearer and firmer values” (McLeod & Yates 2003, p.217).

Below average government schools, if they mention curriculum at all, often only discuss the broad array of subject options available. They are virtually the only

schools to discuss student streaming in the middle years of high school between academic and vocational pathways. They are also almost the only schools to highlight their accelerated and gifted student programs. Other research has stressed that such programs are largely supported by and designed to attract middle class parents (Ball 2003).

Below average government schools devoted the most space in their prospectuses to discussing their facilities, learning spaces and other educational infrastructure. These schools are effectively saying that they provide everything necessary for a child to succeed at school, but that it is then up to the child to do what it takes to make the best use of what the school has to offer if they are to succeed.

5. Commonalities – Parents, Teachers and School Uniforms

This chapter focuses upon the data collected regarding the roles played by parents and teachers in relation to the education schools provide. It also considers the iconography of school uniforms and how these are portrayed in these marketing materials.

As in the previous chapter, the data and discussion presented here investigates the features that the sampled schools otherwise are considered to hold in common, for instance: that students have parents the marketing materials are directed towards, that each school has teachers who provide students with learning and are displayed doing so, or that schools frequently require students to wear school uniforms – are each shown to be handled differently by the various schools when groups according to ICSEA scores.

Parents

These prospectuses often imply, or literally state, that they are directed to students. For instance, BAGS979 beings with a message from the principal which says:

It is with great pride that I welcome you to BAGS979 Secondary College, were we invite you to create your future.

Despite this rhetorical device, it is not at all clear that a Year Six child would be able to read and understand much of the text provided in any of these prospectuses, never mind use what they are told to help them choose between schools.

Readability

Using the readability software that comes with Microsoft Word, the school prospectus for BAGS979, which claims to be directed at Year Six students, has a Felsch–Kincaid grade level of 12 – that is, Microsoft Word estimates that this text is suitable for someone who already has completed 12 years of schooling. The implied audience of these materials, therefore, is likely to be parents, rather than the students themselves. In no case was a prospectus written at a reading level appropriate for the students the schools are seeking to attract, that is, written at a reading level that would ensure these students could comfortably read the documents. Table 14 shows both the average number of words and the average reading grade level in the prospectuses by ICSEA groups.

Table 14 Average number of words and reading level

Words Reading Level

Elite 3076 11

Above Average 2406 12

Non-elite 2303 12

The number of words contained in these documents increases with ICSEA score. However, elite schools are more likely to have, if only slightly, easier to read text than the other ICSEA grouped schools. This is possibly due to it being more likely that their prospectuses will have been constructed with the assistance of professional editors and publishers (see Pini et al 2016). Of the six above and six below average government schools, only one in each category had a prospectus with a reading age below 12. Of the elite schools, three-in-five did.

It is not that these materials might exclude their own stated audience, as this is likely to have only been a rhetorical flourish anyway, but rather that the complexity of the language is also likely exclude many of the prospective parents too. This is

particularly true in schools with low ICSEA scores and schools with high proportions of families from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Table 15 shows the average proportion of students from language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE) in the schools by their ICSEA sector.

Table 15 Average proportion of LBOTE students

Elite 21%

Non Elite 13%

Above Average 22%

Below Average 53%

Parents in below average government schools are, by the definition of the ICSEA scale itself, likely to be from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. That is, from an educational background that did not include finishing twelve years of schooling. As such, the fact that these prospectuses have a reading age that requires the

completion of secondary school in English potentially excludes many of the parents likely to send their children to these schools. Table 15 shows that in below average schools LBOTE parents constitute over half of all parents. In some of these schools LBOTE families represent 70% of the student population. These schools also have, on average, a third of parents in the bottom quartile by ICSEA score, similarly, these parents are the least likely to have finished high school.