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This paper considers the effect of recent education policy on assessment practices in English primary schools and how these affect relationships between teachers and pupils in an increasingly market-driven school system. Previous research has focused largely on the effect of markets at a systemic level, but less attention has been paid to how marketisation plays out in teachers' work at classroom level. Similarly, research on assessment has tended to examine teachers' practices in relation to pupils' learning rather than examining it in terms of the role it plays in teachers' professional working lives. This paper brings these ideas together, using the latter as the context for understanding the former. In particular, it focuses on recent policy changes to the way schools in England are evaluated, moving from final attainment to pupils' progress ‘in-year’, and considers their potential for altering the dynamics within schools rather than just between them. It draws on a small-scale, interpretive, empirical study involving interviews with primary teachers in England. Data from this study are used to illustrate how tensions can arise for teachers and how internal market competition can be set up between them in which pupils' achievements become a commodity to be made use of, encouraging teachers to consider pupils' achievements as private, rather than public, goods. The paper thus provides a starting point for exploring the effect of market-orientated education policy on teachers' assessment practices at the in-school level and briefly examines some of the implications of this effect.

This paper explores the influence that school sport and non-sport extracurricular activities (ssEC and nsEC) can have on academic achievement. A central thesis of this paper is that, despite the literature on the perceived and presumed benefits of school sport and of non-sport activities, theorising a model of the process by which the benefit is attained, which we conceptualise as a case of transfer, has been neglected. Cognisant of the long-standing literature on transfer and the recent resurgence in transfer research, we present a dual step transfer hypothesis by which ssEC and nsEC activities confer academic achievement benefits. Key to this dual step transfer hypothesis is the influence these activities have on non-cognitive skills, whereby the activity promotes non-cognitive skills (i.e., motivational-social skills), which in turn promote learning and academic achievement. We present an overview of transfer from the early discussions framing transfer to either mental muscle or identical elements mechanisms, to more recent discussions and new perspectives on what counts as transfer. To this discussion we compare research linking academic achievement to school physical education, school sport and school non-sport activities. We place particular emphasis on extracurricular activities and the potential influence they can have on non-cognitive characteristics. In making our argument we weigh up the relative support for dual step transfer within extant literature on both areas, and in doing so return to take a position on the long-standing and divergent framing of transfer in terms of either mental muscle or identical elements mechanisms.

In the context of the international problem of ‘early school leaving’, this paper explores the issue of sustained participation in upper secondary education in England. It focuses in particular on the position of middle attainers, who constitute a large proportion of the cohort and whose progress will be vital in realising the Government’s goal of ‘Raising the Participation Age’ to 18 by 2015. The paper draws on evidence from national research undertaken as part of the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training in England and Wales and analysis of New Labour and Coalition policy between 2000-2012. It uses a three-year local study of 2400 14- and 16-year-olds in an established school/college consortium to illustrate the effects of policy and practice on middle attainers. We argue that this important group of young people was ‘half-served’ by New Labour, because of its incomplete and contradictory 14-19 reforms, and is now being ‘overlooked’ by Coalition policy because of its emphasis on high attainers. We conclude by suggesting a range of measures to support the 14+ participation, progression and transition of middle attainers in the English education and training system

Teacher effectiveness research now informs the rationale of much Australian education policy aimed at redressing student under-achievement. The approach draws a ‘straight line’ between teacher practice and student outcomes, ‘controlling’ for and ultimately dismissive of other possible influences. The paper calls into question this conception of teaching–learning relations, particularly the extent to which teaching practice can be reasonably quantified and improvements in students' academic achievement can be solely attributed to and/or sole responsibility placed on the pedagogic strategies employed by teachers. Drawing on the theoretical resources of Foucault and Bourdieu, the paper argues further that teacher effectiveness research is flawed in both means and ends. It concludes that in its ranking of student and teacher performance, such research actually works against the purposes of education; specifically, authentic teaching and learning.

This paper presents a description of the background characteristics and attainment profile of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) in England, and of those missing a value for this variable. Free school meal eligibility is a measure of low parental income, widely used in social policy research as an individual indicator of potential disadvantage. It is routinely treated as context for judging both individual and school-level attainment, as an indicator of school composition, and has been proposed as the basis for the pupil premium funding policy for schools. Knowledge of the quality, reach and limitations of FSM as an indicator is therefore fundamental to accurate decision-making in a number of important areas. This paper uses a national dataset of all pupils (PLASC) for 2007. It looks at the relationship between different indicators of pupil background and attainment to help decide how useful FSM remains in relation to its suggested alternatives, and how to handle the crucial question of missing data and to describe more fully than previously the national picture of who is eligible for free school meals. The results show that, while the distinction between take-up and eligibility has been eroded, FSM remains a useful and clear stratifying variable for pupil attainment patterns in school, linked to type of school attended, school mobility, living in care, special needs, first language and minority ethnic group. The pupils missing FSM values fall into two groups, based largely on their type of school and how long they have been there. One group attends fee-paying schools and is most similar to non-FSM pupils elsewhere and could be aggregated with them in future analyses that do not want to omit them. The remaining missing FSM pupils form a deprived and perhaps super-deprived group. These should not be omitted, nor assumed to be like non-FSM pupils, as currently happens in official school performance figures in England in a way that disadvantages schools with very deprived intakes. The proposal here is that missing FSM pupils in state-funded institutions should be treated in future as a third distinct group. If these issues about missing data are resolved, and other limitations accepted, FSM remains a better indicator of low socioeconomic status than the current alternatives discussed in the paper.

This paper presents data collected in individual case studies that aimed to investigate children and their families who succeeded against the usual ‘odds’ of disadvantage. Funded as an extension of EPPE 3–11 by the Cabinet Office for the Equalities Review, the study focused particularly closely upon the performance of disadvantaged children from White and minority ethnic groups. The study found that disadvantaged families often have high aspirations for their children and provide significant educational support through ‘concerted cultivation’. The paper discusses the implications for policy and for practice and argues that much of the popular criticism of state policies related to social exclusion fail to acknowledge the need to engage with the policy in action as well as in theory. It is also argued that these policies offer significant and valuable contexts for supporting efforts on the part of families and individuals to achieve success in education ‘against the odds’.

Much has been made of the academic success of children who have attended private secondary schools in Britain, but far less attention has been directed to whether there are similar benefits from attending a private primary school. Using data from three British birth cohorts—born in 1958, 1970 and 2000/1—this paper profiles the family background and personal characteristics of children at state-funded and private fee-paying schools and then investigates the effect of the type of primary school attended on academic progress made during the primary-school years. Applying ‘value-added’ linear regression and propensity score-matching techniques, we find evidence of a positive association between private primary-school attendance and a child's cognitive progress in all three cohorts. This effect remains after accounting for a wide range of individual and family characteristics, despite the very different times and socio-economic circumstances experienced by the children and their families in the three studies. Findings are discussed and compared against contrasting international findings.

Whether someone has ever had free school meal (FSM) eligibility over a six-year period is the measure of socio-economic disadvantage currently used in the English school system. It is used to monitor the socio-economic gap in achievement in the education system, to identify particular children at risk of low achievement and to direct funding to particular children and schools. In this paper we assess how well this measure predicts pupil attainment in secondary school in comparison to other measures of socio-economic background known to influence pupil attainment, such as parental education or income. We ask whether the FSM measure is an adequate proxy for a pupil's socio-economic disadvantage in an educational context. To do this we draw on the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England and matched administrative data. We find that the FSM eligibility measure correlates highly with other measures of socio-economic disadvantage, however it does not identify all children living in what would be deemed deprived households. We then compare the extent to which the FSM eligibility measure predicts educational achievement relative to other measures of deprivation and find that its predictive power is only marginally lower than many richer survey measures. This provides some reassurance on its use in policy.

The Graded Assessment in Mathematics (GAIM) project has sought legitimation, at least in part, by appealing to notions of child‐centred learning. At the same time, in order to gain acceptance, it has attached itself to a certification procedure, namely the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). This paper argues that the demands imposed by the needs of certification are irreconcilable with a requirement for child‐focused ‘diagnostic’ style assessment, and have led to serious internal contradictions. The paper also offers a critique of some of the research concerned with establishing hierarchies of mathematics learning.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to articulate our dissatisfaction with current thinking about attainment, in the hope that this may help us to see more clearly what ways of conceptualising attainment would be more useful. Thus most of the paper is devoted to demonstrating the inadequacy of psychometric and taxonomic ways of thinking about attainment, but towards the end we shall very much more tentatively suggest an alternative approach.

This paper addresses the issue of parental employment and hours of work and their impact on children's educational outcomes at the age of 16. I contribute to existing research by applying more accurate measures of parental time spent outside the household—using direct measures of hours spent at work and commuting, and by examining the independent effect of mothers’ and fathers’ work involvement, as well as their joint effect. Additionally, I use longitudinal datasets that allow for the examination of the impact of parental hours of work in the preceding year on the child's exam results in the following year. In contrast to previous studies, which focus on the early development of the child, I examine the parental employment while the child is preparing for a final secondary school certificate. My results show that there is a statistically significant and positive association between parental engagement in the labour market and number of final secondary school exams taken by the child. In contrast, I found that children whose parents work very long hours perform worse at the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) level. This result holds even if unobservable family characteristics are taken into account in family-fixed effects’ and siblings’ estimations.

This paper contributes to the empirical evidence on participation and attainment in higher education by reviewing the patterns of entry and success of undergraduate students. It examines the characteristics of entrants to different subjects and considers the role that subject studied plays in determining the likelihood of graduating with a ‘good’ degree. The data used were drawn from the administrative records of over 38,000 UK-domiciled undergraduate students from one ‘elite’ British university. Despite considerable between-subject variation in degree outcomes, multivariate analysis of the relationship between students’ social and academic characteristics and achievement at university revealed that once social background and prior attainment had been controlled for, the subject students studied added little explanatory power to models predicting final degree classifications. Differences in degree outcome were most strongly related to attainment on entry to higher education, sex and ethnicity. In contrast with attainment during the earlier phases of education, the relationship with occupational class was relatively weak. Disparities between the proportion of higher level classifications awarded in different subjects can be largely explained by the background characteristics of the students who choose (and are accepted) to study on these degrees. This finding has particular implications for policies aimed at increasing both the number and quality of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates in what is often argued to be a ‘shortage’ or ‘priority’ area.

By the time children leave primary school there is a large socio-economic gap in their reading proficiency. There are a number of potential explanations for this socio-economic gap and in this paper we investigate the role of three particular genes and gene-environment interactions in determining children’s reading skills, using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) dataset. We find that whilst these genes are indeed correlated with reading outcomes, effect sizes are small and sensitive to the choice of test used and the sample selected. Our results suggest that the leading candidate genes can jointly explain just 2% of the socio-economic gap in children’s reading test scores. We conclude that the influence of these three genes on children’s reading ability is limited, and their role in producing socio-economic gaps in reading ability is even more limited still.

This paper draws on the concept of parental involvement, popular among educators and policy-makers, in investigating differences in level of attained education by family background. The question is ...

This paper will report on the findings from classroom observations and focus group discussions conducted on the topic of popularity and fitting in at school with girls and boys from four government secondary schools in Antigua. The findings show that whilst boys did experience difficulties negotiating academic success and acceptable masculinities, the consensus was that popularity was associated with low achievement for both girls and boys. However, there was evidence that some girls were able to work hard and maintain better peer relations than other high achieving students, but that this ‘balancing’ required conformity to hetero-feminine norms as well as the espousal of rigid views about what girls can and can't do. This suggests that real equality is far from being reached.

This paper proposes a theoretical model to explain trainee withdrawal and persistence within higher education (HE) based initial teacher training (ITT). Within ITT, attrition and persistence are under-researched and under-theorised, thus providing the rationale for this study. Within HE more broadly, a number of models have been proposed, most notably the seminal work of Tinto. However Tinto’s Longitudinal Model of Departure was postulated for undergraduate academic courses, and has weaknesses in the study of trainees on professional courses, such as ITT. The proposed theoretical model is informed by interview and questionnaire evidence from a new case study of withdrawal and persistence in primary HE-based ITT. In this study, withdrawal and persistence were affected by factors across a range of domains: intra-personal, inter-personal, academic, professional, institutional and external. Tinto’s model is evaluated against the empirical findings of the case study, allowing the proposal of a revised model wh...

This paper reports findings from a study commissioned by the (then) Department for Children, Schools and Families. The research mapped the provision, and explored the impact, of supplementary schools and aimed specifically to develop further understanding as to how supplementary schools might raise the attainment of Black and Minority Ethnic pupils. Drawing on a national survey and case study data from 12 supplementary schools, we highlight a range of perceived impacts identified by teachers, pupils and parents and problematise the concept of impact. We identify the unique contribution and impact that supplementary schools make to the mainstream school attainment of pupils from diverse (linguistic, cultural, ethnic) backgrounds. We suggest that there is much to be learnt by the mainstream school sector about the difference supplementary school education makes to minority ethnic children, while questioning whether mainstream indicators of impact should be applied to supplementary schools.

This paper considers enjoyment of formal education for young people aged 14 to 16, largely from their own perspective, based on the view of around 3000 students in England. The data include documentary analysis, official statistics, interviews and surveys with staff and students. Enjoyment of school tends to be promoted by factors such as successful social relationships, small classes, variation in learning and students having some control of their learning. Enjoyment tends to be inhibited by perceived lack of respect or concern by teaching staff and passive pedagogy. For some disengaged students, a work or college environment with more adult relationships appears to restore enjoyment and enthusiasm. Enjoyment, unlike attainment, for example, is not particularly stratified by the standard student background variables. Nor is there evidence of a clear school effect. This means that enjoyment should be easy to enhance more widely, positively affecting the learner identities of all young people, including the more reluctant learners.

This paper assesses gender differences in academic self-concept for a cohort of children born in 1958 (the National Child Development Study). We address the question of whether attending single-sex or co-educational schools affected students’ perceptions of their own academic abilities (academic self-concept). Academic selfconcept was found to be highly gendered, even controlling for prior test scores. Boys had higher self-concepts in maths and science, and girls in English. Single-sex schooling reduced the gender gap in self-concept, while selective schooling was linked to lower academic self-concept overall.

The performance of departments has been largely neglected in previous studies of subject choice in secondary schools. This is a significant omission because analysis at departmental level enables a fuller assessment of the effects of competition and specialisation on pupil performance. This paper examines relationships between both absolute and value-added measures of departmental performance and the likelihood of students being entered for examination in a subject. It examines these relationships with reference to four option subjects: French, German, Geography and History. It utilises data from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study which examined trends and patterns in departmental effectiveness using a sample of 664 schools which participated in the Yellis monitoring system for a minimum of five years during the period 1995-2002.

This paper describes a limited longitudinal study of young children's early numeracy development within three testing cycles, at the mid-point and towards the end of their reception year (at five years-of-age) and again at the mid-point of Year 1 (at six years-of-age), located within the broader context of progress through to Key Stage 1 SAT results (at seven years). Assessment was carried out using the Utrecht Early Mathematical Competence Test (Van Luit et al., 1994). This comprised eight sub-topics, five items in each, including comparison, classification, correspondence, seriation, counting, calculation and real-life number problem solving. Broadly, one set of sub-tests related to understanding of relations in shape, size, quantity and order, whilst a second set of sub-tests related to basic arithmetic. Three hundred pupils were selected from twenty-one schools, large and small, from rural and urban areas, with high and low concentrations of children eligible for free school meals and/or with special ...

This paper reports findings from the first two years of a four-year longitudinal study into the ways that students' attitudes towards, and achievement in, mathematics are influenced by ability-grouping practices in six schools. Through the use of questionnaires administered to the whole cohort of 943 students, interviews with 72 students and approximately 120 hours of classroom observation, the relative achievement in, and the changes in attitudes towards, mathematics are traced as the students move from year 8 to year 9, with students in four of the six schools moving from mixed-ability grouping to homogenous ability groups or 'sets'. Ability-grouping was associated with curriculum polarisation. This was enacted through restriction of opportunity to learn for students in lower sets, and students in top sets being required to learn at a pace which was, for many students, incompatible with understanding. The same teachers employed a more restricted range of teaching approaches with 'homogeneous' groups tha...

This paper examines and compares the beliefs and attitudes of teachers of large and small infant classes in the north of England regarding class size with particular reference to its relative importance. Following an introduction which contex‐tualises the empirical study the details of the telephone and postal surveys are presented. The findings are analysed in relation to class size preferences, preferential treatment for some children and teachers, and the importance of class size relative to other factors, the latter being the main theme of the study. It seems that class size is not seen to be unidimensional in its influence on classroom events but that it interacts in complex ways with a range of other variables.

This article reports the results of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded study which focuses on the differential academic achievement of different groups of pupils. The paper describes the findings on the size and extent of school effects across 3 years (1990, 1991, 1992) for different groups of pupils (classified by gender, eligibility for free school means [FSM], ethnic group and by prior attainment). Pupils’ overall General Certificate of Secondary Education performance and their performance in selected subjects (English, English literature, French, history, mathematics and science) have been analysed using multilevel modelling, employing a total sample of 94 inner London secondary schools. A ‘value added’ approach is adopted, controlling for selected student background measures of prior attainment (at secondary transfer), gender, age, ethnicity and low income to provide statistical controls for differences between schools in the characteristics of their intakes. Differential ...

The paper reports the results of a reanalysis of data from a major longitudinal data base (the Inner London Education Authority's (ILEA) Junior School Project). Multilevel models are used to examine the extent of differential school effectiveness for reading and mathematics at entry (year 3) and at year 5, and the impact of pupil background characteristics. Differential school effectiveness is investigated for prior attainment in the two areas and for selected background characteristics. The results reveal the existence of differential effectiveness (differential school slopes) for both measures of prior attainment. No evidence of differential effectiveness for pupils of different groups (sex, social class, ethnicity) is found. The presentation of schools’ test results is also examined. Raw test averages are compared with school‐level residuals from multilevel analyses. Marked differences in schools’ rank positions are found and the implications for the publication of ‘league tables’ of schools’ ...

In recent years a number of studies conducted in schools have claimed to provide evidence of the existence of racism amongst teachers, and practices within schools which significantly disadvantage many ethnic minority students. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency to accept such studies rather uncritically, without questioning the nature of the evidence they present to support their conclusions. In this paper I examine two such studies from a more critical point of view. I argue that both suffer from a number of serious weaknesses and that their claims should not have been accepted in the way that they have been.

Within the framework of the Second IEA Science Study a representative sample of Israeli 12th grade students (N=2153) responded to a series of questionnaires and achievement tests in the last term of the academic years 1983 or 1984. The sample consisted of four groups, three of which specialising each in one of the sciences (biology, chemistry and physics) and one comprised of students who did not study any science in their junior and senior years. The purpose of this paper is to report on gender differences in achievement, attitudes, preferences, learning experiences and study habits. The major findings were as follows. 1. The percentage of girls in each of the specialising groups are as follows. Biology: 61; chemistry: 49; physics: 31; non‐science: 66. 2. More boys perceive themselves as high achievers in science and math. 3. Significantly more boys like to study math and science more than other school subjects. 4. Significantly more boys aspire for science‐oriented careers. 5. Boys achieve bett...