The NSW selective schools system is beneficial

I am playing devil's advocate here and will definitely enjoy doing so. 1. In Pro's first contention, he states that the special students who would make it into a selective school would fare worse in a comprehensive school with "lower achieving students", and would result in a different social dynamic. How does con know that the social dynamic at comprehensive schools are not better? Comprehensive schools are actually more beneficial to gifted students, because they provide for less competition, less stress, and the ability to have school friends with a huge variety of skills, and comprehension; they are not limited to exclusively associating with people near their abilities. 2. Teachers should be able to teach any type of student. Teachers for selective schools are generally better equipped than teachers of comprehensive schools. It is unfair to the other students to take away teachers who would give them are better understanding of the world simply for not passing the exam. 3. This is not true. I go to the American equivalent of a comprehensive school (i. e. not a private school) know that children in a wide range of ability will answer questions; often it is the brilliant ones who hold back. This depends more on your character than your intelligence. 4. While this is true for some selective school students, it is not necessarily a good thing. The students who don't make it into selective schools often feel left out or inadequate [1]. Also, because there are more students in comprehensive school, more students would be receiving the negative effect than the positive, so on the whole the Pro's fourth contention is an undesirable. 5. This is only because comprehensive schools typically stay within one area. Of course if a school goes nationwide searching for students, there will be a wider variety of students from different cultures. However, these students all still have something in common, and lack the benefits of experiencing the daily school relationships with students who can't or won't go to selective schools. 6. I thought we weren't playing semantics here. I understand that selective does not necessarily mean elitist, and I see no need to refute this argument because it has nothing to do with the benefits of selective schools over comprehensive schools. Now for my arguments (they must be brief for the 4,000 character limit allows me little room to both refute and present. ): It has been shown that students with special needs when integrated into a common school system benefit from this. For example, mentally disabled students who are put into the equivalent to a comprehensive school on an equal footing benefit from this[2]. Gifted students have special needs, but separating them from other students is detrimental to their success. Just because a student is smarter, it does not mean (s)he is more valuable than other students. As stated before, selective schools create a sense of worth, but the students who do not make it suffer from feeling left out and inadequate. Since there are more students that fall into the second category because of the NSW selective school system, it is wrong to say that that system is beneficial. Indeed, keeping students in comprehensive schools provide for a more equal footing. When students are recruited for selective schools, some of the brightest students are removed, and the others lose role-models. In my school, the leaders are the ones who would be recruited for a selective school under NSW. But, by taking away some of the best students the school has to offer, the comprehensive school suffers; the vast majority of students will be suffering the loss of these brilliant minds. 1. . http://gothamschools.org... 2. . http://www.eduqna.com...