SELECTIVE schools dominated by students from Asian or subcontinent backgrounds are turning into “hyper-racialised hothouses” and fostering cultural segregation, a Sydney researcher has found.

Following her study of inequality and segregation in NSW’s 47 selective schools, University of Technology Sydney lecturer Christina Ho has called for a debate around the selection process for these elite institutions.

The state’s selective high schools were established to cater for “gifted and talented students who have superior academic ability coupled with exceptionally high classroom performance”, but according to Dr Ho, they’re not working that way.

With intensive tutoring programs becoming more widespread and more popular, the requirement for students admitted into the prestige institutions to be naturally gifted and possess extraordinary academic ability may have been overtaken by students who also spend a number of years and after-school hours spent in coaching classes in preparation for the entrance exams.

“It was designed as a system to allow those high achievers to have an environment where they wold be supported, so they wouldn’t be bullied for being nerds, but that was assuming every smart kid would have the opportunity to go,” Dr Ho told news.com.au.

“There’s now a very specific culture that means you’re very unlikely to get in unless you’re enrolled in tutoring and have been specifically training for that test.

“They’re not providing opportunities for everyone, they’re very elitist places for people who are good at passing tests.”

Dr Ho said there is a strong feeling of anger among parents of children who they believe should be in a selective school but might fail to prove so on the tests — they think the other kids are “gaming” the system.

Dr Ho said the reasons students from Asian or subcontinent backgrounds are more likely to enrol in tutoring to help get them into selective schools is a symptom of coming from a migrant family.

“A lot of people say it’s about Confucianism or that just because you are Asian you are born naturally smart or good at maths. I think actually it’s not about culture or race, it’s to do with being a migrant,” she said.

Dr Ho said parents who have migrated from Asian countries are more likely to feel anxiety about their children’s education, and that’s partly to do with Australia’s immigration system.

She said migrants to Australia are more likely to be highly skilled in order to fit immigration criteria. They are also more likely to value education as they can see its value in their own lives.

“You’re getting professional, educated people but they are feeling anxious that their kids might not have the same opportunities as Australian-born kids because they don’t have social networks to fall back on, they don’t have old boys networks to fall back on, they see it as the only means. The combination of those factors leads them to feel anxiety about their children's education,” she said.

Dr Ho said anxious parents are desperate to get their children into top selective schools, and enrol in very specific tutoring courses to make sure that they do.

“Before if you were struggling, for example with maths, you might have a tutor to help you. These days it’s not about being bad at something, it’s about getting ahead, coming first,” she said.

“The thing that worried me is that amount of tutoring that is centring on these entry tests. There are tutor courses that are just about practicing these tests. It’s a very narrow way of studying, it’s just to pass this one test. it isn’t necessarily improving your knowledge, just your exam skills.”

Dr Ho said along with the concerning tactics to get into the schools, the cultural make-up of the classes is also problematic.

“It creates school communities that are not representative of the Australian community,” she said.

“Most of the schools in Sydney are 80 or 90 per cent kids from language backgrounds other than English and I think this has led to a lot of debate among parents, particularly Anglo-Australian parents who are now starting to express a bit of a concern about feeling excluded from the system, and they’re now turned off from the system.”

Dr Ho said in selective schools, Anglo-Australian students are often made to “feel their ethnicity” for the first time, and can feel marginalised.

She said while Asian students are often “quite comfortable” being in the majority, they also struggle with their identities as they often feel like “just one of the crowd”.

The researcher said throughout her studies she encountered students who quickly became preoccupied with race after being in such a segregated environment for a short amount of time “in a way they never do in a more balanced school”.

“I don’t think there’s generally a lot of explicit racism, but it warps your sense of self and sense of others,” she said.

“A lot of things get racialised — the subjects that you choose, the areas you want to be good at, you end up organising your friendship or sporting group based on race.”

Dr Ho said students in selective schools were also likely to perpetuate racial stereotypes and feel pressure to live by them.

“That can be quite oppressive,” she said.

Dr Ho said selective schools and the tutoring industry that exists alongside them have lost sight of their purpose and was creating a system of winners and losers.

“I think we need to have a really solid debate about they way selective schools are operating and whether they are operating in the way that they were designed to operate,” she said.

“Ultimately we need to support opportunities for every child to get a top quality education.

“[Selective schools] are always going to be elitist institutions. Ultimately I would like to think that every school provides opportunities for those kinds of kids, every school should be providing accelerated programs for kids who need them. You shouldn’t have to cream off the best and brightest because that’s a brain drain from the rest of the system.

“That’s the kind of school that gives the students a chance to see and socialise and learn from everyone as opposed to this increasing segregation that we have in our system.”