Fewer State leavers go to uni

The proportion of State school students eligible for university has fallen to a five-year low, with new figures showing just four out of 10 obtaining a tertiary entrance rank.

This was despite efforts last year to increase the number of students eligible for university by offering easier course options.

Figures from the Tertiary Institutions Service Centre obtained under Freedom of Information laws have revealed that 41 per cent of State school students received a TER last year, compared with 47 per cent in 2004.

The decline contrasts with an increase in students from independent and Catholic schools who obtained a TER, rising from 53 per cent in 2004 to 59 per cent last year.

A TER is a rank between 0 and 99.95, derived from a combination of final exam scores and school assessments in four subjects, which indicates where a student is placed in relation to all other students in a year group.

For example, a student with a TER of 80 is in the top 20 per cent of the total Year 12 school leavers.

In recent years, students have needed a TER of at least 55 to get university entrance.

TISC also released the median TER achieved by every school, which provides another way of ranking their performance ahead of Curriculum Council league tables to be revealed today.

Using median TERs as the measure, the top-ranked school in the State was St Hilda's Anglican Girls' School.

The top State school was Churchlands Senior High School, which ranked ninth, with a median TER of 89.1.

The Education Department failed to explain why the proportion of State school students with a TER had been falling steadily over the past few years.

The school support programs executive director David Axworthy said the total number of State school students with a TER was higher last year than in any of the previous five years. In 2009 there were 4478 students at State schools, compared with 4449 in 2005.

He said schools and their staff had always supported students strongly to do well in the TEE and achieve as high a TER as possible.

Association of Independent Schools of WA executive director Valerie Gould said the increase in the number of private school students eligible for university had coincided with an overall growth in enrolments at independent schools.

"A lot of it would be explained by the drift over the last five to 10 years into the non-government sector," she said.

"That shift has been even greater in the secondary area."

Ms Gould said schools had also indentified other paths to post-school destinations.

The median TER for all State schools was 77.25, 6.4 points lower than the independent sector median TER of 83.65 and 3.2 points lower than the Catholic schools' median of 80.45.