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In this article, we examine education policymaking in England during the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on the period from 2020 to 2022. We argue that the pandemic, while obviously damaging materially, economically and psychologically, seemed to have provided a rare opportunity for a step change, a chance to recalibrate and reconsider values assumed as 'truths'. However, policymaking in England appears to have been driven by a desire to return to normal as soon as possible or to double down on control. Through a rigorous policy analysis of two specific areas of policy - initial teacher education and inspection - we review policy and ministerial speeches, as well as academic papers, media articles and social media blogs published from the start of the pandemic in England, to analyse the extent to which policy formation was reactive in an attempt to maintain a steady state and return as quickly as possible to pre-pandemic normality and to previously stated intransigent policy positions. We suggest that this policy formation reflects a broader trend in policymaking, which seeks to use power and sustain privilege, underpinned by a constructed evidence base, to present a particular 'truth' about what needs to be done to improve education outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In common with other OECD countries, there is a gender gap in educational achievement in England favouring girls. This carries through to tertiary education. On the other hand, boys are far more likely to engage in STEM in post-16 vocational education and at university. The underachievement of boys overall, but over-representation in STEM, presents significant challenges for policy. This paper documents changes in the gender gap over the last 20 years in England and discusses findings in the light of international evidence. It concludes that education policies, in academic and in vocational spheres, can be designed to reduce gender inequalities that exist in both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: In contrast to other medical specialties, trainees in Geriatrics have historically provided an increased contribution to clinical workload in General Internal Medicine and a reduced output of academic achievements. More recently, development of non-clinical skills has been recognised to have similar importance to clinical skills and the South East (SE) London Geriatrics Training Programme has thus supported trainees in applications for Out of Programme (OOP) opportunities to optimise career progression. Methods: Doctors who had undertaken specialist registrar training in the SE London Geriatrics Training Programme at any time between 2011 and 2019 were sent a questionnaire to assess whether they had completed time OOP and whether they had been awarded research grants, published papers in peer-reviewed journals, had abstracts accepted for presentation at conferences, and/or published book chapters during their training programme. Chisquared and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests were used to compare data between registrars who had completed time OOP and those who had not taken time OOP. Results: 77 (24 male; 53 female) registrars completed training in the SE London Geriatrics Training Programme between 2011 and 2019. 71 registrars (92%) completed the questionnaire, of whom 31 (44%) completed time OOP. In total, registrars were awarded 15 research grants, published 86 papers in peer-reviewed journals, had abstracts accepted for 184 conference presentations and published 20 book chapters. A notably increased proportion of registrars who took time OOP had an output of research grants, papers published in peer reviewed journals, abstracts accepted for presentation at conferences and/or book chapters respectively compared with registrars who had not taken time OOP (23% vs 5% ; 61% vs 23%; 84% vs 33%; 45% vs 5%). This equated to a combined academic output in 94% of registrars who completed time OOP compared with 48% who did not (p <0.001). Conclusions: A very strong association existed between registrars in Geriatrics taking time OOP and academic achievement substantiating the training programme’s aspiration to support development of non-clinical skills that may be helpful to trainees in their future careers. It would be worthwhile further work being undertaken in this area in other regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the possible impact of market forces on educational attainment in secondary schools in England and Wales. One of the main arguments made by market advocates in favour of extending programmes of school choice was that this would drive up standards. However, despite 12 years of relevant experience in the UK, it remains very difficult to test this claim. This paper examines some practical difficulties before presenting three possible models for considering changes in educational standards over time. The results are inconclusive, possibly even contradictory. The measures, such as GCSE and A levels, extending back to 1988 and beyond, have clearly increased in prevalence. In terms of these measures, students from state-funded education have also reduced the 'gap' relative to those from fee-paying institutions. However, it is not clear that either of these developments is market related. In addition, there is no evidence yet that these improvements indicate any breakage in the strong link between the socio-economic background of students and their school outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Assessment grades are ‘estimates’ of ability or performance and there are many reasons why an awarded grade might not meet a candidate's expectations, being either better or poorer than anticipated. Although there may be some obvious reasons for grade discrepancies, such as a lack of preparation or under-performance, there are a number of technical issues to consider, such as the potential effects of random measurement error, human error and grade misclassification. However, traditionally, there has been limited information available to the public about such issues. Purpose: This study formed part of a two-year investigation into the reliability of public examination outcomes in England and the current paper explores participants’ narratives relating to one of the themes that emerged from the study of public perceptions of assessment reliability. It examines how individuals interpreted and rationalised their examination results, particularly those that failed to meet expectations, and discusses the impact that such results may have on individuals’ academic self-concept. Sample and method: Ten focus groups were conducted across five qualification user groups: two each with employees, employers, teachers, trainee teachers, and job-seekers (74 participants in total). A flexible discussion schedule was employed to explore participants’ experiences and perceptions of assessment reliability. Main findings: Participants tended to internalise ‘blame’ for results that were poorer than expected by constructing explanations that focused on a perceived lack of preparation, ability or knowledge. These experiences appeared to have a negative impact on individuals' academic self-concept. Secondary school teacher participants shared experiences of marking, technical and standard setting errors, and were more aware than other qualification user groups of the external factors that can impact on assessment outcomes. Conclusion: Examination results that are poorer than expected can threaten individuals’ academic self-concept, confidence in their ability, and influence their study and career intentions and opportunities. A better understanding of educational measurement issues may offer individuals a more informed framework for understanding their examination results, especially where results do not meet expectations. [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 provides an estimate of the impact of educational attainment on juvenile conviction rates using information at the Local Education Authority in England. The empirical analysis uses aggregate conviction rates over time for three cohorts of young people, born between 1981 and 1983, and their corresponding educational attainments, poverty indicators, time away from school and school resources. Results using mixed-effects models show that the increase in educational attainment between cohorts is associated with reductions in conviction rates for most offences (burglary, theft, criminal damage and drug-related offences) but not for violent crime. Reductions in poverty are associated with decreasing conviction rates for violent crime, criminal damage and drug-related offences, whereas increasing unauthorized time away from school is associated with higher convictions rates for theft. The results are important, as they complement current empirical studies by looking at the impact of education on cohort-specific conviction rates over time and at the impact of education on different types of offences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief paper is a commentary on a piece of work recently published in the Oxford Review of Education (Goldstein & Noden, 2003) which purports to create a multi-level model of the social segregation between schools in England 1994-1999. Segregation, as a measure of the (un)evenness of the distribution of disadvantaged students between schools, is an important characteristic of the school system, related to social cohesion and school effects (Gorard a at, 2003). Probably the first thing to note about the `new' approach by Goldstein and Noden to measuring such segregation is that, if we accept the findings at face value, then it produces results that have already been published (e.g. Gorard, 2000). Their substantive findings are that segregation between schools in England rose slightly from 1994 to 1999, and that areas with academic selection or a high proportion of schools with control over their own admissions tend to have higher and rising levels of social segregation. As is so often the case in practice (Gorard, 2003a), the use of multi-level modelling (MLM) in this instance tells us nothing new. MLM here appears to confirm results obtained using the far simpler approach of analysing segregation at varying levels of aggregation. In fact, this appearance is deceptive because Goldstein and Noden were not measuring segregation at all.

Background: Grouping students into classes by ability on a subject-by-subject basis, also known as setting, is a common practice in many educational systems. An important issue is therefore the way in which setting decisions are made. While educators and policy-makers favouring setting claim that ability or achievement is the sole criterion used, critics counter that there is a tendency for factors such as pupils' socio-economic status background, gender and ethnicity to influence teachers' setting decisions. Purpose: This paper aims to examine the extent to which factors other than prior achievement influence setting decisions in England. In particular, we wish to study both schools' declared policies on setting and what data may reveal as to predictors of which set pupils will be placed in at year 7, the first year of secondary school. Research questions are therefore: (1) what factors do teachers say influence setting decisions in their schools; and (2) what variables are significant predictors of set membership of students? Sample: To test these hypotheses, we conducted a survey of schools and analysed national datasets. Twelve Local Authorities (LAs) in England were selected on a purposive basis to represent areas of ethnic diversity and social disadvantage. Within these LAs, 100 secondary schools were randomly sampled and contacted with a request to complete a survey consisting of questions on whether the schools set, how setting decisions were made, how often sets were reviewed and which pupils were in which sets (using Unique Pupil Numbers). In total, 44 surveys were returned completed. Methods: Data from the questionnaires was linked to data from the National Pupil Database. Pupil level analyses were conducted using statistical tests and multinomial logistic regression models in which set membership was regressed on prior attainment (National Curriculum Test Scores at the end of primary school), social background, special educational needs (SEN) status, ethnicity and gender. Results: In the survey, schools indicated that setting decisions were based on prior attainment and ability. Results showed that prior attainment was indeed the main predictor of the probability of being assigned to a particular set for both English and mathematics. However, although mentioned by respondents as being the main factor in their decisions regarding setting along with ability, it was a relatively poor predictor. Social background (as measured through ACORN categories and free school meals eligibility) and SEN were also significant predictors of probability of set assignment. Conclusion: These findings suggest that over and above the effect of attainment, pupils with no SEN and pupils from higher socio-economic status backgrounds are more likely to be assigned to higher sets and less likely to be assigned to lower sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent concern with the apparent 'under-achievement' of boys in England's comprehensive schools has led schools to review the potential of single-sex classes as a means of improving performance. This paper reviews the arguments for such a strategy, in the context of one school where such an approach has underpinned the organisation of the school through the last three decades. We examine the rationale behind the original decision to implement single-sex teaching, consider the evolution of the curriculum through time, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this mode of organisation from the varying perspectives of parents, students and teachers. We consider whether the strategy has contributed to an improvement in the achievement levels of girls, and discuss the extent to which single-sex teaching has the potential to have a positive impact in raising boys' performance. In reviewing the evidence, we conclude that the single-sex mode of teaching in the school is effective in contributing to high achievement levels, in many contexts providing a conducive and supportive environment for students' learning. We suggest that such groupings may offer more advantages for girls than for boys; we argue that the potential of the system will only be fully realised when it is explicitly recognised that girls and boys do respond differently, in certain contexts, to different teaching-learning styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data on Further Education (FE) colleges in England to examine the relationship between resources and performance. We model the relationship between inspection scores and resource levels to investigate whether colleges with greater expenditures perform better in terms of their inspections scores. Our findings, similar to others using different functional specifications, are that there is no evident positive link between unit resource levels and performance, but that a positive link between size and performance can be substantiated. The implications of this for policy and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the subject uptake of the pupils who took part in the 1984 Assessment of Performance Unit (APU) Age 15 Science Survey in England. Sex-related and ability-related differences in uptake; Common subjects; Accounts of the uptakes of science subjects and modern foreign languages.

This paper reports research into the relationship between the apparent variety of standards applied to different GCE Ordindary level subjects and school- children's avowed preferences for subjects. The ordering of subjects by grades awarded agrees closely with those derived in similar research in England and elsewhere and is shown to be comparatively stable across time. This ranking is also shown to agree closely with expressed preferences of subjects by 14-year-olds, and reasonably closely with those of 16-year-olds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RAE ratings have been criticized as biased in favour of universities that are old, in England, large and represented on the panel. We investigate these accusations for the 1996 and 2001 RAE ratings of economics departments using independent rankings from the academic literature as quality controls. We find RAE ratings to be largely in agreement with the profession's view of research quality as documented by independent rankings, although the latter appear to be more focused on research quality at the top end of academic achievement. Accusations of bias find no support in the data, except for panel membership in 1996. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the 'the social class attainment gap' in education has become a government priority in England. Despite multiple initiatives, however, little has effectively addressed the underachievement of working-class pupils within the classroom. In order to develop clearer understandings of working-class underachievement at this level, this small research study focused on local social processes by exploring how secondary school teachers identified and addressed underachievement in their classrooms. Our analysis shows how teachers' identifications of underachieving pupils overlapped with, and were informed by, their tacit understanding of pupils' social class position. While many teachers resisted the influence of social class, they used stereotypes to justify their practice and expectations, positioning pupils within educational and occupational hierarchies. This, we conclude, suggests the need for more systematic attention to the micro-social processes that provide the conditions through which working-class underachievement is produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyril Norwood, to all appearances, was the quintessential insider of English education in the first half of the 20th century. An outstanding classical scholar, Oxford educated, a successful headmaster before returning to Oxford as president of his college, St John’s, knighted for his services to education in 1938, he was also prominent in national education policy well before his career culminated in 1943 in the Norwood Report on the secondary school curriculum and examinations. Yet he was also an outsider, insecure because of the circumstances of his childhood and upbringing, never fully accepted in the public schools over which he presided, not fully trusted by the officials at the Board of Education or by many of his colleagues despite his decades of public service. This study investigates the paradoxical nature of Norwood’s contribution to and significance in English education, a victim of social class anxieties and insecurities even at the same time that he became the most famous celebrant of the so-called ‘English tradition’ of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social class differentials in educational attainment have been extensively studied in numerous countries. In this paper, we begin by examining class differentials in the progression to higher secondary education among 16-year-old children in England and Wales. As has been shown for other countries, the differentials result both from the primary effects of differing levels of academic performance of children of different class background and from the secondary effects of differences in the educational choices that these children make at given levels of performance. Through counterfactual analyses in which the performance distribution of one class is combined with the choice distribution of another, primary and secondary effects are decomposed and the former are shown to be roughly three times the size of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses the social impact of tiering and examination systems on gender by focusing on 14 year-old students in England. Framework of national assessment across the four key stages of the English national curriculum; Implications for the use of tiered levels of entry in the national curriculum assessment system; Evidence of gender inequality in tiering practices and misrepresentation of student achievement.

The relationships between educational attainment and social disadvantage for different ethnic groups, presented by Brewer & Haslum (1986), are reconsidered Their assertion that indicators of social disadvantage are not associated with attainment for black children is shown to be based on a number of unsound statistical and methodological procedures Data from a study of younger children in Inner London are presented which do show an association which is the same for both black and white children But more data are needed for a more complete understanding of these associations [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the effect of free pre-school education on child outcomes in primary school. We exploit the staggered implementation of free part-time pre-school for three year olds across Local Education Authorities in England in the early 2000s. The policy led to small improvements in attainment at age 5, with no apparent benefits by age 11. We argue that this is because the expansion of free places largely crowded out privately paid care, with small changes in total participation, and was achieved through an increase in private provision, where quality is lower on average than in the public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim was to investigate whether the duration of breastfeeding, at all or exclusively, is associated with educational achievement at age 5. We used data from a prospective, population-based UK cohort study, the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). 5489 children from White ethnic background born at term in 2000-2001, attending school in England in 2006, were included in our analyses. Educational achievement was measured using the Foundation Stage Profile (FSP), a statutory assessment undertaken by teachers at the end of the child's first school year. Breastfeeding duration was ascertained from interviews with the mother when the child was 9 months old. We used modified Poisson's regression to model the association of breastfeeding duration with having reached a good level of achievement overall (≥78 overall points and ≥6 in 'personal, social and emotional development' and 'communication, language and literacy' points) and in specific areas (≥6 points) of development. Children who had been breastfed for up to 2 months were more likely to have reached a good level of overall achievement [adjusted rate ratio (RR): 1.09, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01, 1.19] than never breastfed children. This association was more marked in children breastfed for 2-4 months (adjusted RR: 1.17, 95% CI: 1.07, 1.29) and in those breastfed for longer than 4 months (adjusted RR: 1.16, 95% CI: 1.07, 1.26). The associations of exclusive breastfeeding with the educational achievement were similar. Our findings suggest that longer duration of breastfeeding, at all or exclusively, is associated with better educational achievement at age 5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Socioeconomic inequalities are a key policy challenge. Studies to date have not taken a unified approach to assess how socioeconomic inequalities in health, behaviour and educationalattainment change as children age. Methods We examined maternal education inequalities in multiple offspring health, behavioural and educational outcomes and how these changed across childhood and adolescence in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a cohort born in 1991/1992 in South-West England (N=5560–11 463). Results Inequalities were observed for some health measures (blood pressure (BP), height, cholesterol, bone mineral density (BMD) and fat-mass (females)) but not in other measures ( parent-assessed child health, triglycerides, fat-mass (males), high-density lipoproteincholesterol, C reactive protein). The strongest health inequality was systolic BP (mean difference comparing highest to lowest maternal education −0.28 SD (95% CI −0.35 to −0.20), approximately 2.6 mm Hg. Wide inequalities, similar in magnitude to BP, were observed for behavioural outcomes. Even greater inequalities were observed for offspring academic achievement (mean difference comparing highest to lowest maternal education 1.43 SD (95% CI 1.37 to 1.50), a difference of 22%). For all behavioural outcomes and some health indicators, inequality was stable over childhood. For some outcomes (BP, BMD and most education outcomes), inequality narrowed as children got older. Only for height and attainment in English tests was there evidence of widening inequalities with age. Conclusions Our results suggest that within this cohort, maternal education inequalities in offspring health, behaviour and educational attainment are established in childhood but do not increase up to adolescence. Maternal education inequalities in behaviour and educational attainment were considerably larger than in health measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genetic influence on the association between contemporaneously measured intelligence and academic achievement in childhood was examined in nationally representative cohorts from England and The Netherlands using a whole population indirect twin design, including singleton data. We identified 1,056 same-sex (SS) and 495 opposite-sex (OS) twin pairs among 174,098 British 11 year-olds with test scores from 2004, and, 785 SS and 327 OS twin pairs among 120,995 Dutch schoolchildren, aged 8, 10 or 12 years, with assessments from 1994 to 2002. The estimate of intelligence heritability was large in both cohorts, consistent with previous studies ( h = 0.70 ± 0.14, England; h = 0.43 ± 0.28-0.67 ± 0.31, The Netherlands), as was the heritability of academic achievement variables ( h = 0.51 ± 0.16-0.81 ± 0.16, England; h = 0.36 ± 0.27-0.74 ± 0.27, The Netherlands). Additive genetic covariance explained the large majority of the phenotypic correlations between intelligence and academic achievement scores in England, when standardised to a bivariate heritability ( Biv h = 0.76 ± 0.15-0.88 ± 0.16), and less consistent but often large proportions of the phenotypic correlations in The Netherlands ( Biv h = 0.33 ± 0.52-1.00 ± 0.43). In the British cohort both nonverbal and verbal reasoning showed very high additive genetic covariance with achievement scores ( Biv h = 0.94-0.98; Biv h = 0.77-1.00 respectively). In The Netherlands, covariance estimates were consistent across age groups. The heritability of intelligence-academic achievement associations in two population cohorts of elementary schoolchildren, using a twin pair extraction method, is at the high end of estimates reported by studies of largely preselected twin samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study ability peer effects in English secondary schools using data on four cohorts of students taking age-14 national tests and measuring peers' ability by prior achievements at age 11. Our identification is based on within-pupil regressions exploiting variation in achievements across three compulsory subjects tested at age 14 and age 11. Using this novel strategy, we find significant and sizable negative effects arising from bad peers at the bottom of the ability distribution but little evidence that average peer quality and good peers matter. However, these results are heterogeneous, with girls benefiting from academically bright peers and boys not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the causal effect of attending a state Faith school on primary education achievement in England using administrative student-level data and implementing various strategies to control for students' selection into Faith schooling. Our regressions control for fixed effects in prior achievement and residential postcode to compare pupils who are close residential neighbors and have identical observable ability. We also use information on future school choices to control for preferences for Faith schooling. Results show that pupils progress faster in Faith primary schools, but all of this advantage is explained by sorting into Faith schools according to preexisting characteristics and preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crucial role of social integration for the academic success of home students is a common theme in pedagogical research, but for international students the emphasis has been much more on cultural factors and the challenges of transition. The findings of the International Students’ Experience Project at the University of the Arts, London suggest that this is far from the whole story. International students come to the UK precisely to make cosmopolitan friendships, but are held back—by language and communication, but also, less obviously, by differences in age, qualifications, experience and expectations, and by the need to adapt rapidly to an environment which is new in every sense. While home students surmount the challenges of social integration with relative ease, international students thus need more support. By coming to understand the needs of these students in all their complexity, institutions can play a key role in facilitating integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Incorporation' in Further Education in England and Wales centralised policy control and implemented a per-pupil funding formula that promoted equity, in that colleges were paid more for enrolling 'disadvantaged' students, and for performance, in that funding was contingent on retention and student success rates. This article analyses the impact of funding policy on student success rates for adults in general further education colleges using five years of student-level administrative data from 1998/99 to 2002/03. Results from descriptive statistics show that student success rates rose by 10% during the five-year period, with the largest gains made by ethnic minorities, adult basic education students, and students from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Logistic regression results mirror the descriptive statistic results but find especially strong gains for adult basic education students and students receiving additional learning support funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the lived experience of practising academics as part of an inquiry into the vexed question of 'academic identities'. Identity is understood not as a fixed property, but as part of the lived complexity of a person's project. The article reports on data from a small study in one university. The data suggest that academic identity is complex and that, moreover, it cannot be read off from descriptions of teaching, research, or management roles. Respondents in all roles were able to maintain highly distinctive, strongly framed academic identities. Experiences of class, gender and the significance of family are reported as having continued salience in respondents' lives. Moreover, despite all the pressure of performativity, individuals created spaces for the exercise of principled personal autonomy and agency. The article concludes that paying detailed attention to how changes are being experienced is an important element in theorising trends in the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recently introduced national pupil database in England allows the tracking of every child through the compulsory phases of the state education system. The data from key stage 2 for three local education authorities are studied, following cohorts of pupils through their schooling. The mobility of pupils among schools is studied in detail by using multiple-membership multilevel models that include prior achievement and other predictors and the results are compared with traditional ‘value-added’ approaches that ignore pupil mobility. The analysis also includes a cross-classification of junior and infant schools attended. The results suggest that some existing conclusions about schooling effects may need to be revised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the important issue raised by Peter Tymms where he challenges the official government reports of an impressive rise in standards in mathematics and English in primary schools in England since 1995, suggesting that the rise in scores, particularly since 2000, does not indicate rising standards. In order to substantiate its claim the Government has repeatedly referred to the results of an international study which put England in the top three of the 35 participating countries for achievement in reading, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (2001). Firstly, the nature of an international comparison which uses a single indicator of achievement is critically examined in terms of the fair comparison and resulting commensurability of very different national school populations. Here issues of cultural bias are raised in relation to the unidimensionality of the reading test items and the contrasting wealth, representational sizes, and varied geographic dispersals of the target populations. Secondly, the PIRLS study is analysed for its potential for linguistic bias. Finally, the PIRLS data for England are examined, where it is shown, in comparison with other countries, the sampling and the test itself to have been advantageously organised. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the validity of known results with regard to the testing of English primary-aged children in literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary statistics continue to play an important role in identifying and monitoring patterns and trends in educational inequalities between differing groups of pupils over time. However, this article argues that their uncritical use can also encourage the labelling of whole groups of pupils as ‘underachievers’ or ‘overachievers’ as the findings of group‐level data are simply applied to individual group members, a practice commonly termed the ‘ecological fallacy’. Some of the adverse consequences of this will be outlined in relation to current debates concerning gender and ethnic differences in educational attainment. It will be argued that one way of countering this uncritical use of summary statistics, and the ecological fallacy that it tends to encourage, is to make much more use of the principles and methods of what has been termed ‘exploratory data analysis’. Such an approach is illustrated through a secondary analysis of data from the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales, focusing on gender and ethnic differences in educational attainment. It will be shown that, by placing an emphasis on the graphical display of data and on encouraging researchers to describe those data more qualitatively, such an approach represents an essential addition to the use of simple summary statistics and helps to avoid the limitations associated with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heavily influenced by Putnam's particular variant of social capital theory, the New Labour government in the UK has introduced several initiatives designed to raise educational achievement by building the social capital of families identified as socially excluded. One such initiative was the Education Action Zones (EAZ) policy. Whilst this policy has recently been eclipsed by other initiatives designed to enhance education in areas of disadvantage, many of the social capital–building components of EAZs have now become relatively widespread in schools in disadvantaged areas. In this article the authors use qualitative data from a study of EAZs to explore how parents experience initiatives designed to build their social capital and to examine the interactions between parents' values and the values implicit in these initiatives. In doing so, they identify and elucidate some key limitations of current attempts to operationalise social capital theory. The analysis offered in the article thus has significant implications for policy and policy scholarship. In particular, it draws attention to the need for policy makers and practitioners concerned with challenging social exclusion to pay closer attention to the real, as opposed to imagined, local sociocultural environments within which policies are implemented and to the voices, choices and values of the people these policies are designed to help. In so doing, the article also underlines the importance of policy analysts attending to these same complexities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of ability grouping is frequently justified on the grounds that it is an effective means of raising attainment. Little large-scale quantitative research has been undertaken since the introduction of the National Curriculum in England and Wales. The aim of this article is to examine the effects of setting on students' achievement in English, mathematics and science General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations. Data were collected from a cohort of over 6000 Year 9 students in 45 mixed secondary comprehensive schools who were followed up in Year 11 when they sat GCSE examinations. Multilevel modelling was used to estimate the effect of setting on GCSE attainment, taking account of prior attainment, social disadvantage, gender and attendance. There were no significant effects of setting in English, mathematics or science. Effects on higher and lower attaining students were not consistent in the three subjects. Socially disadvantaged students achieved significantly lower grades and girls achieved higher grades than boys, especially in English. In all three subjects, students of similar ability achieved higher GCSE grades when they were placed in higher sets. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers some of the student and family factors influencing the educational achievements of deaf children. It is based on a study of 16-year-old deaf students in mainstream schools in England. Findings indicate the complexity of interpreting statistical results, especially on the effect of degree of hearing loss. The discussion addresses the specific question of why this factor is often reported as not significant in academic achievement. It also considers the surprisingly low effect of family socioeconomic status, speculates on the size of the “school effect” in deaf education, and considers the coding of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses findings of the study "Primary Schools in England," relating to mixed age classes of primary school students. When school grouping practices were related to achievement and a rating of the match between tasks set and the capacities of students to undertake them, the findings lent little support to mixed age classes. Nine and 11-year-old children in single age classes achieved higher scores than those in mixed age classes on standardized tests. The assessments of match in single age classes showed a definite superiority in relating the difficulty of the work to children's capabilities at all ability levels.

A recent re-analysis of a large data base relating to 'O' level achievement in England is revealing significant school effects which could not have been disclosed by the more conventional procedure of multiple regression analysis. These effects are due to strong interaction between variables and they present schools characteristics not so much as factors which elevate or depress achievement but as agents which aggregate or disperse achievement scores about the group mean. This implies that school process is uniquely and strongly associated with enhanced achievement among certain well-defined subsets of pupils but that grouping within schools is such as to nullify any overall effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the origins of the superior academic performance of men compared with women at Oxford and Cambridge universities in England for the years 1987 to 1991. Comparison with performance at British universities excluding Oxford and Cambridge; Causes of the abrupt drop in the performance of women; Subjects men excelled in; Effect of premenstrual syndrome on the gender deficit.

The article provides historical biographical information about the life and works of economist Sir Henry Phelps Brown, a former President of the Royal Economic Society, who died on December 15, 1994. Henry was born on 10 February 1906 in Calne, Wiltshire, England, where his father was an ironmonger. It was to be Henry's perception that the circumstances of his childhood affected profoundly both his character and his life. That perception he made known in conversations with his close friends; but it emerges also in a remarkable autobiographical note which he wrote, at the request of the British Academy, in 1987 and which was published after his death in the "Review of Political Economy" in 1996. He did not go to school until he was over seven years of age. Henry's studies at Taunton, England, were shaped by an aspiration to be a journalist. A scholarship took Henry to Wadham College, Oxford, England, in 1924. Henry succeeded Sir Dennis Robertson as a member of the Council on Prices, Productivity and Incomes (The Three Wise Men) and served on it from 1959 to 1961. Henry was an independent member of the National Economic Development Council (Neddy) from 1962 to 1964. He was a member of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth from 1974 to 1978.

Duncan's model of status attainment in the U.S. used as a point of comparison for analyzing the process of educational attainment, using several American and English data sets. The overall amount of father-to-son mobility is very similar in the two countries, and so are the relative contributions of social origin and ability to the son's attainment. Although the two educational systems differ greatly, their division of pupils into academic and non-academic segments reflects almost identically the effects of social origin and ability. These findings are interpreted in relation to Lipset's analysis of the two countries' value systems and Turner's contrast between "sponsored" and "contest" mobility patterns. To a great degree, the two countries appear to use quite different mechanisms to bring about the same outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]