If you were a disadvantaged child today in an Australian school, chances are high that a majority of the other children in your school would also be disadvantaged. Your school would most likely need more resources to have experienced special education experts; it probably would not have qualified mathematics and science teachers, and nobody to teach music.
In this respect, Australia is an outlier among the richest countries in the world. No other wealthy nation concentrates disadvantaged children into disadvantaged schools like we do. That concentration effect has increased the socio-economic segregation between schools and has widened the achievement gap between affluent and poorer children that has been evident in international education comparisons and was confirmed by the latest Naplan data.
