World Class Education Systems

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) commissioned McKinsey & Company to develop a comparative fact-base for an analysis of the performance of England’s education system and high-performing systems overseas, drawing on its international benchmarking framework.

Key points:
- The world’s highest-performing education systems share three mutually reinforcing attributes:
1. high challenge: high expectations of pupils and fair evaluation of schools and other parts of the system
2. high support: enough resource and capacity-building to meet those high expectations
3. aligned incentives: incentives and consequences that induce schools and other parts of the system to meet expectations

When benchmarked against international comparators, many school reforms implemented in England are shown to be world-leading. However, they are not yet delivering consistently world-class teaching for every student, in every classroom in every school. Following significant improvements attainment can be seen to be levelling off, and evidence suggests performance still has a stronger link to socio-economic background than is the case in the world’s best systems.

Most aspects of England’s schooling system can be rated as ‘good’, or ‘world-class’. One exception to this pattern is high expectations for student achievement - a key attribute of high performing systems – which is rated as ‘fair’.

There is also evidence that academic content and standards are not fully meeting the demands of employers and universities.

Strengths identified in the English system include:
- Devolution of resources to schools and three year budgets
- A focus on turning round or closing failing schools
- Intervening in poorly performing local authorities
- Reform of teacher training and best practice marketing of teaching as a profession

The analysis identified scope to strengthen performance in other areas, including the consistency of classroom teaching and the quality of professional development, and the ability to codify and scale up best practice.

Raising Education Achievement and Breaking the Cycle of Inequality

This OECD report examined the two big strategic objectives which the government has for education policy (as outlined in the Public Sector Agreements). This report compares recent policy against international standards.

Key points:
- Whereas the UK often ranks very highly on certain measures of economic policy and outcomes, this is certainly not the case when it comes to educational standards.
- The test-dominated education system in the United Kingdom has pioneered the use of school benchmarking techniques and the use of targets to raise school quality. However, targets may have biased some national measures of education performance, and there is relatively little evidence of improvement in performance when evaluated using international tests of cognitive ability, such as PISA and PIRLS.
- Socio-economic background plays an important role in explaining education performance, and the government has tried to address this through the use of funding formulas which direct additional resources to areas with a higher proportion of pupils from deprived backgrounds. There has been some improvement in the most disadvantaged schools but pupils in the middle and lower half of the distribution continue to perform particularly poorly relative to students in countries with the best performing education systems.
- One explanation may be that local authorities and schools are not distributing deprivation funds as intended by the central government, resulting in outcomes which can be seen as inequitable. Stronger measures may be required to correct this imbalance.

The paper makes the following recommendations:
• Increase regular participation in quality early childhood education, and continue to target childcare services provided by Sure Start Children’s Centres to disadvantaged families. Sustained intervention once disadvantaged children have entered primary school will also be required, to ensure that the benefits of pre-school interventions are sustained.
• Continue to promote a focus on the acquisition of core literacy and numeracy skills for pupils at primary and secondary school.
• Ensure that the focus on core skills is not compromised by the goal of expanding the average number of years of schooling. Emphasise the role of core literacy and numeracy skills within the new Diplomas. Consider introducing a higher age for compulsory participation only for those students who have not already achieved a certain minimum standard of core skills by age 16.
• Evaluate returns to the new diplomas closely. When A-levels are reviewed vis-à-vis the new Diplomas in 2013, give serious consideration to moving towards a more unified framework of qualifications as originally recommended by the Tomlinson report.
• Ensure continued participation in international tests of cognitive ability, such as PISA and PIAAC.
• Reduce the focus on testing and targets and put more focus on supporting weak students and schools.
• Design all remaining targets in a way that limits the potential for gaming, by ensuring an interactive performance management system that captures the complexity of the education process. Ensure that remaining key performance measures are not based on targeted outputs.
• Encourage a public debate about whether the goal of the education system should be to make all schools high performers, and what societal values that would reflect.
• Consider ways of encouraging the highest quality teachers to move to the most disadvantaged schools – such as by giving bonuses for high quality teaching performance at such schools.
• Promote a national benchmark formula for local authorities to use in allocating funding between schools, while still permitting flexibility (i.e. deviation from the benchmark formula) to meet local needs.
• Promote the transition to a more efficient allocation of funds by providing standard procedures for taking deprivation-targeted funding out of the formula used to determine the Minimum Funding Guarantee.
• Evaluate the pros and cons of introducing a differentiated voucher system of funding (as in Chile) where pupils from poorer families receive vouchers that are valued more highly than those for the general population.
• Encourage more research into determining which resource mixes within schools are most successful at narrowing socio-economic gaps.

Jobs for youth, OECD

This OECD paper on youth employment offers an objective critique of recent government initiatives and policy.

Key points:
- Measures of youth labour market performance and indicators describing the transition from education to work over the past 15 years paint a mixed picture. On the one hand, there is evidence that youth labour market integration and career progression have improved considerably since the mid-1990s, however, other indicators paint a less rosy picture.
- In 2007, the youth unemployment rate was 14%, slightly above the OECD average, compared with just 11% in 2004. These figures hide significant differences between teenagers (16-19-year olds) and young adults (20-24-year olds).
- 13% of 16-24-year olds were neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET) in 2005 (the latest year for which comparable data are available), and many youth in this group are at high risk of poor labour market outcomes and social exclusion. This rate is just above the OECD average of 12% and has increased slightly over the past decade.
- The New Deal for Young People – has helped many youth return to work, sustainable employment outcomes have proved difficult to achieve and there are signs that the programme is no longer as effective as in the early days.
- In terms of the education system, the priority is to reduce early leaving from education and training.
- Provision of free early childhood education, which helps reduce early leaving from education and training particularly when interventions are sustained beyond the pre-school period, is lower in England than in many OECD countries.
- Raising the age of compulsory participation in education and training to 18 by 2015 has the potential to ensure that youth enter the labour market better prepared for work. However, the part-time learning participation option may bring in its wake some enforcement problems when job separation occurs.

The report provides a good, objective, introduction to recent policy in this area and the current planned changes to the 14-19 agenda.

Parenting in ordinary families

This JRF report examined the literature around parenting.

Key points:
- Research into cultural differences and similarities in parenting indicates that aspects of parenting relevant to all cultures include parental sensitivity to the child’s needs, socialisation towards cultural norms and support for the child’s need for autonomy across time. The parenting to which a child is exposed may act as a buffer against adversity if it is warm and supportive or, alternatively, it may increase the risk of poor child outcomes if it is hostile or rejecting.
- Within the literature, a variety of parenting themes have emerged but those which recur consistently include sensitivity towards the needs of the child, management of the child’s behaviour and qualities of the parent–child relationship, including warmth and support, hostility and rejection.
- There is evidence that childhood anti-social behaviour increases in conjunction with increases in physical punishment but another school of thought proposes that, as long as its use is rare and only backs up other types of discipline, the effects of physical punishment may be beneficial.
- Much of the literature has focused on the parenting undertaken by mothers but it is important that paternal parenting is also examined.
- Although there were some aspects of parenting which were affected by factors which are immutable (maternal age, education and ethnic group), these were few and far between. Younger parents were more likely to be ambivalent about the timing of the child’s arrival but older mothers were more likely to report that they felt less fulfilled and that they had less time for themselves.
- Mothers who had spent fewer years in formal education reported that, on the whole, they felt less confident in caring for the child and they were less likely to report that they spent time teaching the child. It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions with respect to the effects of ethnic group on parenting.
- Parenting varies little by ethnic group, maternal age or education and that on the whole parenting is warm and supportive in all groups.
- There was a large amount of variation in parenting across time: parenting remained stable for fewer than one in five families. In part, this is likely to be a function of the increasing age of the child.
- The factors which had the most influence regarding changes in parenting score were mother’s mental and physical health. Deteriorations in health were associated with reduced parenting scores and, in contrast to all other variables, improvements in health predicted increased scores.

Expansion of primary literacy and numeracy pilots

The DCSF have expanded their flagship literacy and numeracy initiatives:

Every Child a Reader - by 2010/11 this will cover to 30,000 children in 3,000 schools (and 150 local authorities) a year struggling with early reading getting extra support. A recent report from the Institute of Education found that the pilot had been a huge success, with children getting higher than average results for their age. Within Yorkshire & Humber Every Child A Reader is being expanded this year to: Bradford, Kingston Upon Hull, Leeds, Sheffield, Wakefield & Kirklees.

Every Child Counts - being piloted in 21 local authorities from this month and then rolled out over the next two years, so that by 2010/11 30,000 children in 1,900 schools (105 local authorities) will be covered. Within Yorkshire & Humber Every Child Counts will be initially piloted in: Leeds & Bradford.

Every Child a Writer - being piloted in nine local authority areas, a total of 135 schools and 2,500 children, from this month and will be rolled out nationally by 2011 so that it covers over 45,000 children in up to 9,000 schools and 150 local authorities. Despite the improvements in numeracy and literacy over the last decade, writing lags behind early reading improvement rates. No local authorities within Yorkshire & Humber are piloting this initiative.

Every Child Counts, like the established Every Child a Reader programme, focuses on the bottom 5% at Key Stage 1 and will mean that children struggling with early maths are given high quality intensive specialist support from trained teachers.

OECD Education at a Glance 2008

The Annual survey by the OECD found the following for the UK (note this refers to all education, including HE):

- Below average class sizes are afforded through an above average teaching load for teachers.

- The highest spenders on educational institutions are Denmark, Iceland, Korea and the United States, with at least 7% of GDP accounted for by public and private spending on educational institutions.

- The proportion of GDP spent on tertiary institutions in Belgium, France, Iceland, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland and the United Kingdom is below the OECD average; these countries are among the OECD countries in which the proportion of GDP spent on primary, secondary and post secondary non-tertiary education is above the OECD average.

- For all levels of education combined, public and private investment in education increased in all countries by at least 8% between 1995 and 2005 in real terms and increased on average by 42%, with the UK increasing spending by more than 50%.

- The UK comes fourth out of 30 OECD countries for per-pupil funding in early years and enrolment is far above the OECD average.

- Teacher salaries at primary school level are above the OECD average.

- Secondary school class sizes are below the OECD average.

- The rate of increase for teacher salaries is above the OECD average.

- The UK has the highest private rate of returns to upper secondary education or post-secondary non-tertiary education.

- High completion rates of full degree courses which results in a flow of graduates that remains above the OECD average and the UK continues to be an attractive destination to foreign students, especially in science and technology subjects, and is only second to the USA overall.

- The UK has the 6th highest number of science graduates per 100,000 employed aged 25-34, placing us ahead of Japan and Germany.

Draft legislation: Children's Trusts; Sure Start; Pupil Groups; Apprenticeships; Wellbeing; School Buildings; Admissions

In the last three months (June-September) there have been ten draft legislation pieces open for consultation from the DCSF alone. These are listed below, in order of initial publication.

Admissions - a technical area, so best reading the document if interested.
Pupil wellbeing - educational establishments are required to promote pupil wellbeing, this is draft guidance as to how they could achieve.
Schools causing concern - proposed changes on how to deal with schools which cause concern.
Strengthening Children's Trusts - proposals aimed at making the Children's Trust the main strategic body for children's services.
Zero carbon schools - calls for evidence so the government can realise their 2016 target.
Apprenticeships - steps to legislate for the provision of apprenticeships, including making the LSC ensure apprenticeships exist.
Draft guidance on safeguarding children from sexual exploitation.
Draft guidance for children not receiving a suitable education.
Under performing groups - changes to which groups of children are monitored reducing the overall number but including pupils on free school meals for the first time.
Sure Start Children's Centres - legislation to make this provision a legal requirement.

Summer holidays - good for education?

Mike Baker questions the role of the annual summer holidays for schools and considers how they effect children. The DCSF have recognised that summer born children do occur extra difficulties compared to their peers as a result of their time of birth and have vowed to offer additional support to them via extra tuition for catch up classes.

A Failed Generation - Conservative Party paper: "schools increase inequalities"

This paper by the Conservative party states that in the past decade educational inequality has increased and that the current education system entrenches disadvantage.

Key points:
- 55% of secondary schools in the 10% most deprived parts of England do not achieve 30% of children getting five good GCSEs including English and maths – the Government’s official benchmark for a failing school. This is compared to just 3 per cent in the 10 per cent least deprived areas.
- Last year five local authorities – including Islington, Darlington and Blackpool – did not have a single pupil from a maintained school attempt GCSE Physics.
- Last year, over 60 per cent of pupils eligible for free school meals did not gain the 3Rs at Key Stage 2.
- Shockingly, 33,909 pupils eligible to receive free school meals did not attain any GCSE grades higher than a D in 2006/07 – 47% of all FSM pupils.
- In the last year, the attainment gap at GCSE between the poorest areas and the wealthiest widened by 15pp – from 28% to 43%.
- In 2002, the gap between free school meal pupils and the rest in science at Key Stage 2 was 10pp; it now stands at 15. And the gap has widened to 20% in maths – up from 16% in 2002.
- In 2002, at Key Stage 2 (aged 11), the gap between 11 year-olds eligible for free school meals (FSM) and those who were not reaching the expected level was 26 points for English, 16 points for maths and 10 points for science.
- In 2005, for the same pupils aged 14 this gap had grown to 27 points for English, 27 points for maths and 30 points for science.
- And in 2007, by the time pupils came to take GCSEs 21.1% of FSM pupils gained five good GCSEs including English and maths, compared to 49% of non-FSM pupil s- a gap of nearly 28%

The paper does not state any recommendations nor give Conservative Party policy.

A Level results 2008

The key headlines from this years A Level results:

- 2.7% increase in the number of entries at A Level and a 1.2% increase at AS level.
- 7.5% increase in maths A Level entries and a 15.5% increase in further maths.
- Biology, physics and chemistry witnessed 2-3% increases in the number of entries.
- English is the most popular A Level (with 10.8 of all candidates taking English) this is followed by maths and then biology.
- A-C grades are up from 72.8% to 73.9%
- A grades see a small rise to 25.9%

Yorkshire and Humber has made one of the smallest improvements in the number of candidates gaining grade A at A level (2002-08) and only 22.3% of entries gain a grade A (second worst government office region).

For full report refer to the JCQ paper here.

GCSE results 2008

The key headlines from the GCSE results 2008 are:

- Overall pass rate at A*-C grades are up by 2.4pp to 65.7%
- English is up 0.7pp and maths 1.1pp
- Entries receiving either an A* or A grade has risen from 19.5% last year to 20.7%
- Entries to chemistry, physics and biology have increased by around 30%
- Boys pass rate is exceeding that of girls, hence the gender gap is closing: boys pass rate in English is up 0.9pp (girls 0.4pp) and in maths it is up 1.2pp (girls 1.0pp)
- For the first time boys pass rate went through the 60% mark and now stands at 62.1%

pp = percentage point(s)

Yorkshire & Humber remains the government region with the lowest percentage achieving a grade C (60.8%) or grade A (16.8%).



For full results see JCQ paper here

DCSF Customer Perception Survey

BMG (commissioned by the DCSF) have undertaken this customer perception survey by interviewing 1000 respondents across the UK (a sample designed to be broadly representative of the general public). The survey is structured on the 6 Department Strategic Objectives which the DCSF have.

Key points:

- 65% believe it is very important that 3-4 year olds attend some form of pre-school.

- 80% believe that bullying is a problem in schools, to some degree. Females being more likely to assert this claim.

- The majority of respondents feel that all situations are safe for young people during the day, although opinion is divided when considering situations for young people at night.

- The majority of general public respondents feel that the current quality of publicly funded education is good, with a minority rating any stage as poor to any degree.

- Respondents were most likely to rate the current quality of university or higher education as good as almost nine in ten gave a positive rating here (87%). This is followed by the younger education stages as nurseries, pre-schools and early learning were rated positively by 85%, while 84% feel that the quality of primary education is good. 6th Form colleges or Further Education colleges were felt to provide good quality education by 81%. Secondary schools were most likely to be rated as very or quite poor, by a third of general public respondents (34%), although still the majority of respondents rate secondary schools as good (66%).

- The majority of respondents feel that pupil behaviour is generally good (30%) or acceptable (40%), while around a quarter (27%) feels that it is poor.

- Seven in ten respondents agree that England is a good country for children to grow up in, while just over a quarter disagree that this is the case.

The influence of context on attainment in primary school

Growing awareness of the importance of parents and the home environment in shaping children’s achievement, coupled with the recognition of the school as a site for engagement in broader aspects of social and personal development, has raised interest in the interactions between these different influences as a way of addressing issues of educational attainment and inequality. This study by the Institute of Education explores the nature of these links and considers the relative contribution of different aspects of four different ‘contexts’ or likely spheres of influence on pupil achievement in England at Key Stage 2 (age 10/11), as well as their associations with one another.

Key findings:
- Pupils with better contexts – i.e. better individual, school and family background and experience – have higher scores in Key Stage 2 assessments in English, maths and science.
- Child capabilities are most important in predicting Key Stage 2 attainment across all three subjects. Social and economic family background factors carry the second-largest influence. Much weaker in predicting attainment are proximal features of the family (family relationships and behaviours), with the school-peer context having the weakest influence.
- Individuals who have a good quality experience in one sphere of their life are also more likely to have good experiences in other contexts.
- The effect of each context on attainment is affected by its relationships with other contexts.

Involvement of business in education

This DCSF review of the most robust evidence on the impact of education links with employers
specifically focused on measurable impacts.

Key points:
- There are positive impacts of employers’ involvement with education. However, there have been only a few studies that provide evidence of a measurable improvement in grades, or other measures of students’ attainment.
- Other positive impacts include preparedness for work, developing job and work skills, improving work-based competencies, attitudes and behaviours, enhanced employability and higher initial wage rates. Although not directly related to student attainment these findings provide valuable evidence of the impact and importance of business involvement in education.
- In ‘Business Involvement in Mathematics’, communication and exchange of ideas between teachers and the business community about the curriculum and teaching was a key contributory factor to the positive impacts.
- For mentoring to be effective it should be part of whole-school approach to raise attainment, and that there should be clear selection criteria for students receiving mentoring.
- In the Increased Flexibilities Programme, which provided vocational learning opportunities for young people, having employers as visiting speakers contributed to students gaining higher qualifications.
- Having employees working with schools as an actual work assignment, rather than as an extra-curricular activity, was a key feature of the success of the IBM business links with education.
- Positive impacts on students’ outcomes other than objective measures of student
attainment included:
• Lower drop-out rates, improved attendance, increased academic course taking, and the increased likelihood of graduating on time. (Kemple and Snipes, 2000).
• Higher rates of enrolment and continuity in post-secondary education, sustained higher levels of employment, and higher hourly wage rates.
- Of the higher quality studies, some found positive impacts on academic attainment. But, a similar number did not detect any impact.
- No high quality research has detected a negative impact on attainment.

Participation in HE

This report by the DIUS presents an analysis of the relationship between prior attainment and
young participation by gender, socio-economic class and ethnicity

• Historically, women had been under-represented in Higher Education. By 1992, however, the Age Participation Index suggested that young women’s participation rates had caught up with those of men. The 2005/06 Higher Education Initial Participation Rate figures showed a 7.2 percentage participation gap in favour of women - a gap which appears to continue to widen.
• This gender gap does not appear at the point of entry to Higher Education, and can be observed early on in the educational system. In 2007, 65% of girls achieved 5+ A*-C GCSEs or equivalent, compared to 55.8% of boys. Girls are also more likely to stay on in full-time education at age 16 (82% of girls and 72% of boys). They are more likely to be entered for A levels, more likely to pass them, and also more likely to do better than boys.
• For young people (18-19 year olds) who are English-domiciled and who did not attend an independent school in Year 11, we find no conclusive evidence of a gender difference in the likelihood of participating in HE - once prior attainment is controlled for and hence, efforts to reduce the gender gap in HE participation should predominantly be aimed at increasing the relative attainment of young men prior to HE.
• We find that young people from ethnic minority backgrounds are overwhelmingly more likely to enter HE compared to White people with the same prior attainment. In the case of young people who were eligible for FSM, we find that prior attainment explains the vast majority of the gap in participation compared to non-FSM pupils. In both cases this suggests that something else affects the likelihood to participate in HE, over and above prior attainment.

Good practice in literacy and numeracy

This paper by PwC for the Northern Irish Education Department to examine good practice in literacy and numeracy by looking at Irish and British cities.

Key points:
Respondents thought that reasons for the ‘long tail’ of underachievement in Northern Ireland included:
- A lack of parental involvement in their children’s education;
- A perceived lack of value placed on education in certain areas, particularly deprived Protestant areas;
- A shortage of positive role models;
- The impact of ‘The Troubles’;
- A decline in the readiness for schooling of pupils entering primary school in recent years (e.g. in terms of behaviour, linguistic development etc);
- A lack of baseline data on young children, hindering early intervention in schools;
- The transition between pre-school and primary and between primary and post-primary schools; and
- A lack of strategic direction and consistency of approach at the system level.

Measures to improve boys’ performance were identified at the individual level, the pedagogical level, the school level and at a system-wide level.
These include:
- Mentoring;
- Target-setting and more personalised learning;
- Introducing greater variety in teaching styles and activities;
- Creating an ethos of high expectations and aspirations throughout the school;
- Using data effectively to identify areas of difficulty;
- Developing appropriate professional development for teachers; and
- Disseminating good practice.

Respondents also raised concerns about:
- The weight given to teaching literacy and numeracy in Initial Teacher Training (ITT), particularly for those planning to teach in post-primary schools;
- The level of support for special educational needs;
- Resources for literacy and numeracy (including the layout of school buildings); and
- The need for strong strategic leadership across the sector.

Effective schools and school systems are characterised by:
- Strong leadership and strategic vision;
- A focus on learning and development for all staff;
- Close linkages with parents and the wider community;
- An emphasis on personalised learning, tailored to the needs of the individual pupil;
- Creativity and making learning fun;
- Collaboration with other schools, particularly at transition stages; and
- The effective use of data.

Northern Ireland: closing the gap

This strategy paper by the Department for Education (Northern Ireland) provides a useful summary of the successes and failures of this education system in raising standards, especially of certain groups of students who tend to consistently under-achieve in numeracy and literacy.

The paper summarises research (national and international) which informs the strategy:
- Targeting the allocation of resources in favour of children and schools in socially deprived areas and highlighted the positive contribution of Reading Recovery as an effective mechanism in improving standards in literacy was recommended.
- Teachers should have suitable initial and subsequent training in numeracy, as well as sound subject-specific knowledge and recommended that pupils should experience a wider and more challenging range of learning opportunities, including mental calculation in a range of contexts, tasks requiring strategic thinking, higher-order questioning, collaborative problem-solving, and increased use of ICT.
- The teaching is most effective when it is interactive and contingent on the pupils’ responses, includes collaborative activities, encourages discussion, involves problem-solving and investigative work, and links the learning with other subjects, including the use of authentic problems.
- The indications are that far more attention needs to be given, right from the start, to promoting speaking and listening skills to make sure that children build a good stock of words, learn to listen attentively and speak clearly and confidently. Speaking and listening, together with reading and writing, are prime communication skills that are central to children’s intellectual, social and emotional development. All these skills are drawn upon and promoted by high quality, systematic phonic work.
- High and lower-attaining children in year 2 who had access to linguistic phonics outperformed other children in year 2 who did not participate in the programme.
- A systematic approach to phonics at an early stage is more effective than later less systematic phonics and that a phonics approach corresponded well with the emphasis in the revised curriculum on enriching the children’s learning environment and learning experiences through activities such as learning through structured play at the Foundation Stage.
- The impact of socio-economic disadvantage on levels of attainment in literacy and numeracy, and on educational standards generally, is highlighted consistently in research fi ndings and specifi cally in a report commissioned by DE on Barriers to Recognising the Benefits of Education. That report recommended the further development of extended schools to establish the school as a hub for multi-agency services to support families and encourage educational involvement.

Improving outcomes for low-achieving students

This report by HM Inspectors (Scotland), visited a number of schools that were making a significant difference for lower-achieving groups of pupils, often in less advantaged communities to find out what these schools had in common and what good practice could be found and shared.

Key points:
- Inspectors found common characteristics of effective practice in raising achievement for the lowest attaining 20% of pupils. The characteristics of effective practice which make a difference to young people’s lives by improving their literacy and numeracy skills are not new or innovative. They are characteristics that should be present in every school, in every class, and in every lesson.

- In particular, they relate to:
• the quality of relationships between staff and pupils
• consistently high expectations
• opportunities to work collaboratively
• well designed opportunities for pupils to be actively involved in learning and to contribute to discussions
• the commitment to a shared vision of how to improve the quality of pupils’ learning
• effective use of self-evaluation for improvement
• valuing and empowering staff, pupils and parents in order that they can work together to improve learning
• creating a climate of ambition and high aspiration for all
• ensuring that the school has a clear framework for teaching literacy and numeracy.

A useful document for leaders and teachers interested in classroom practice.

Expenditure and attainment at primary school

This report by the LSE for the DCSF examined whether the dramatic increase in school expenditure in the last 10 years has led to increased pupil outcomes at primary school.

Context:
In much of the academic literature, it has proved difficult to find any positive relationship between school resources and academic outcomes, mainly because of the funding mechanism that exists for schools in England. Local authority grants for education are determined as a basic per pupil amount plus supplements for measures of social deprivation and additional educational needs. Local authorities in turn allocate funding to schools by a formula, which is largely driven by the number of pupils but also gives additional funding for pupils from socially disadvantaged backgrounds or with special educational needs. Pupils with these characteristics achieve, on average, lower results and hence the funding mechanism may introduce a negative correlation between resources and pupils’ performance; schools with more resources perform worse on average.

Key points:
- An increase of £1,000 in average expenditure per pupil (roughly an additional third of current expenditure) implies an average improvement in attainment corresponding to 4.3, 3.5 and 1.9 percent of a level in these subjects (key stage 2 levels).
- It seems to be easier to translate expenditure increases into improvement in Key Stage 2 attainment for English in more disadvantaged schools (compared to less advantaged schools), whereas the opposite is true for Science. For Maths, the effect of expenditure is higher in more advantaged schools, but the differential between school types is not as high as for the other subjects.
- Pupils eligible to receive Free School Meals do seem to benefit more on average from increases in expenditure in terms of attainment in English and Maths. There is less of a differential for Science.
- There is a stronger effect of expenditure on higher ability pupils (on the basis of their Key Stage 1 assessment) across all subjects.
- It would appear that spending on staff (teachers, support staff and other staff) are driving the overall effect. Learning resources are also potentially important for raising attainment in English and Science.
- We conclude that the increases in expenditure probably have been cost effective. To evaluate this fully, future work should investigate whether the effects of increasing expenditure in primary school persist and are evident for pupils when they undertake assessments in secondary school.

The effect of USA: No Child Left Behind

This report from the USA describes findings from the second year of the most comprehensive, intensive, and carefully constructed study to date of trends in student achievement in all 50 states since 2002, the year the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted.

Key points:
- It is not possible to directly relate improvements in student achievement to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy.
- Since 2002, reading and math achievement has gone up in most states according to the percentages of students scoring at the proficient level. Gains tended to be larger at the elementary and middle school grades than at the high school level. Achievement has also risen in most states according to effect sizes.
- In states where sufficient data exists, gaps have narrowed more often than they have widened since 2002, particularly for African American students and low-income students. Gap trends were also largely positive for Latino students, but this finding is less conclusive because in many states the Latino subgroup has changed significantly in size in recent years.On the whole, percentages proficient and effect sizes revealed similar trends of narrowing or widening, although percentages proficient gave a more positive picture of achievement gap trends than effect sizes.