Search

This paper aims to examine the case for a focus on place-based drivers of inequalities in educational attainment among secondary school students in Scotland. Using desk-based sources, it provides an account of the post-2015 policy episode around improving educational attainment among children from disadvantaged areas. This started with the Scottish Government claiming that its 'defining mission' was to 'close the gap' but the place-based focus of policy was soon dissipated and the legislation that intended to be the flagship of reform was shelved. The paper shows that international evidence prompts a need for the impact of disadvantage based on place to be factored into approaches to schooling and provides a regretful account of its insecure traction in Scottish policy. It argues that a serious weakness of the case for place in Scotland is the underlying evidence base and concludes by suggesting how existing data sources could be used more effectively and by outlining some alternative policy approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan's Punjab province has witnessed numerous education reforms in recent years. Many of these reforms have been aimed at improving the well-documented low levels of learning by focusing on improving teaching quality. The rhetoric suggests that government schools, particularly those in rural areas with a more disadvantaged pupil base, are especially ineffective at imparting learning. This paper seeks to investigate whether children in rural Punjab are learning literacy and numeracy over the course of a year, and if so, are some pupils progressing more than others. Using recently collected data, it finds that children in our sample are making progress. Variation in progress is found to be greater within schools rather than across them. The competence and qualifications of a teacher also makes a significant difference to a child's academic progress. The paper further finds differential progress for rich and poor students within schools, suggesting an important role for education policy to put in place targeted support towards those from disadvantaged backgrounds to ensure improvements in their learning keep pace with their peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development of the hensachi system in Japanese education from the 1960s when it first appeared as a de facto measure for scholastic achievement. Unlike absolute scoring systems (such as A-level grades) hensachi gave an indication of the probability of getting a place on a particular course at a particular school or university rather than telling applicants where the bar was set in order to have a chance of being offered a place. Private companies quickly saw the opportunity to collate the huge amounts of data needed to obtain accurate hensachi bell curve distributions and began operating practice exams (mogi shiken) in schools across Japan. From the mid-1970s onwards, hensachi increasingly became seen as the source of many educational ‘evils’ in Japan and there were many attempts to ban its use. It was blamed for cramming, examination hell, and a focus on educational scores rather than learning. The system was also being used by teachers and schools to short cut the real examination system. The final section of the paper explores why, despite these concerns, repeated predictions of the demise of hensachi have proved to be premature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the disadvantaged position of working-class children in the education system, it is important to understand how parents and families might support their children to succeed academically. This paper reports on 35 case studies that were conducted as part of the Effective Provision of Pre-School, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE 3–16) research project. Using in-depth interviews with children and parents this study investigates parental involvement with school and learning during primary and secondary school years in working-class families with children who are academically succeeding above prediction and children who are progressing as predicted, given their background characteristics. The paper provides descriptions of emotional and practical support for academic learning in these families and discusses how parents explain their involvement or lack thereof. This paper identifies differences in socialisation practices between the two groups of working-class families: ‘accomplishment of natural growth’ in families with children progressing as predicted (Lareau, 2003) and ‘active cultivation’ in families with children succeeding above prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A much larger proportion of English 14-year-olds expect to apply to university than ultimately make an application by age 21, but the proportion expecting to apply falls from age 14 onwards. In order to assess the role of socioeconomic status in explaining changes in expectations, this paper applies duration modelling techniques to the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, analysing transitions in young people’s expectations both from being ‘likely to apply’ to being ‘unlikely to apply’ and vice versa. Young people’s socioeconomic background has a significant association with changes in expectations, even after controlling for prior academic attainment and other potentially confounding factors; in addition, young people’s backgrounds affect their responsiveness to new evidence on academic attainment at age 16. This suggests more could usefully be done to maintain the educational expectations of academically able young people from less advantaged families, especially providing guidance on how to view new academic results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we examine the trajectories of initially higher- and lower-achieving children from lower and higher socio-economic status families from primary school through to university in England for the first time. We also explore what explains these trajectories. This enables us to provide new insights into when and why the performance of children with similar initial achievement diverges on the basis of their socio-economic background. Our results indicate that pupils from poor backgrounds who are higher achievers in primary school fall behind their better-off but lower-achieving peers during secondary school. This suggests that secondary school may be a critical period to intervene to prevent poor children from falling behind their richer peers. Our analysis suggests that there is less divergence in performance between pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds who attend the same schools. This result is particularly strong for children with low initial achievement. While we remain cautious about the implications of these findings, they provide suggestive evidence that schools (or the sorting of pupils into schools) play an important role in explaining why the test scores of richer and poorer children diverge over time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reflects upon the nature of a target-setting and mentoring scheme in an 11-16 school in England, through a series of retrospective interviews with students who continued into further education. It considers the extent to which the initiative impacted both upon students' formal academic achievement at 16+ and upon the subsequent longer-term aspirations of these students. Interviews with students who achieved considerable 'value-added' in their GCSE examinations suggested that the impact of mentoring was strongest amongst those students who came from homes where there was less expectation of them participating in further and higher education, and that this effect was not differentiated according to gender. The paper suggests that longer-term transformation of students' aspirations, and the challenging of gendered course and career stereotypes, will only be achieved if schools adopt a more holistic and proactive approach to careers education and to widening participation for their students, and that the absence of such proactivity will limit the longer-term gains initiated by successful mentoring activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between stream placement and the academic progress made by children in England in Year 2 of primary school, drawing on data from the longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). The MCS is a sample of 19,000 children born across the UK around the turn of the century and their families. Academic progress was compared between children in England in the ‘top’, ‘middle’ or ‘bottom’ streams, and among the majority of non-streamed children. Multiple regressions took into account child, family and school characteristics and showed that stream placement significantly impacted on the academic progress made by children. Children in the ‘top’ stream achieved more and made significantly more academic progress than children attending schools that did not stream, while children in the ‘middle’ or ‘bottom’ streams achieved less and made significantly less academic progress. The reasons for this and the educational implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are long-standing achievement gaps in England associated with socio-economic status (SES), ethnicity and gender, but relatively little research has evaluated interactions between these variables or explored school effects on such gaps. This paper analyses the national test results at age 7 and age 11 of 2,836 pupils attending 68 mainstream primary schools in an ethnically diverse inner London borough. The groups with the lowest educational achievement and poorest progress were both Black Caribbean and White British low SES pupils. White British middle and high SES pupils made substantially more progress than White British low SES pupils, significantly increasing the SES gap over time. However low and high SES Black pupils made equally poor progress age 7–11. School effects on pupil progress were large, but there was no evidence of differential school effectiveness in relation to SES, ethnicity or gender. Low SES pupils in the more effective schools performed significantly better than high SES pupils in the less effective schools, but all pupils (both low and high SES) benefit from attending the more effective schools and so these schools do not eliminate the SES gap. The limits to change that may be achieved by schools alone are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a literature review conducted in the UK for the Design Council and CfBT (Higgins et al., 2005) which looked at the evidence of the impact of environments on learning in schools. We have reviewed the available evidence regarding different facets of the physical environment and provided an analysis based on different areas of effect, including the extent to which different facets interact (positively and negatively) with one another. Our conclusions suggest that, although the research often indicates the parameters of an effective environment, there is an overall lack of empirical evidence about the impact of individual elements of the physical environment which might inform school design at a practical level to support student achievement. However, at a secondary level of analysis, there are indications that environmental change can be part of a catalytic process of school development and improvement. The implications of these findings for Building Schools for the Future will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]