Leadership

Selection On Attainment? Local Authorities, Pupil Backgrounds, Attainment And Grammar School Opportunities

Expanding the number of grammar schools is unlikely to promote social mobility by providing more opportunities for disadvantaged pupils, according to this new study published in Educational Review.

The study showed how a child’s chances of going to grammar school varied depending on the Local Authority (LA) in which they lived, their social and ethnic background, and their attainment level at primary school. In other words, affluent families whose children sit the 11 plus test for grammar schools in local authorities where they do not live are gaining an edge over disadvantaged pupils.

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      string(420) "... and poverty. The secondary modern schools also receive less funding per pupil within their local authorities than do grammar schools. Policy-makers always focus on grammar schools, whereas an equivalent claim to ‘we must have more grammar schools’ would be ‘we must have a lot more schools that are deprived ..."
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      string(6202) "Once the pupil intake of grammar schools is taken into account based on factors such as chronic poverty, ethnicity, home language, special educational needs, and age in the year group, the Durham University analysis shows that grammar schools are no more or less effective than other schools. The study also showed that pupils attending grammar schools, on average, are far less likely to have special educational needs and are less likely to have English as an additional language. Once these differences are accounted for, grammar school pupils attain about the same as equivalent pupils in the rest of the country. The research not only looked at the social backgrounds of grammar pupils, but also:  rates of chronic poverty  ethnicity  home language  special educational needs  age in the year group The findings suggest England’s grammars take only a tiny proportion of pupils who are, or have been, eligible for free school meals.This is important, say the researchers, because such pupils’ results tend to decline with every year they are on free meals. This means that other schools in selective areas are taking more than their fair share of the poorest and chronically poor pupils. The researchers say the findings could have implications for selection policies worldwide as many countries such as China and Singapore have highly selective schools within a national system and some such as Germany and Austria have an entirely selective tracked school system. The researchers are calling on the Government to phase out grammar schools as their analysis shows that grouping more able and privileged children in grammar schools can harm the majority of others who don’t attend those schools. Main Points:The apparent success of grammar schools is simply due to the pupils coming from more advantaged social backgrounds and already having higher academic attainment at age 11. The few authorities in England that have retained selection and grammar schools have the highest level of socio-economic segregation between schools in England with the remaining schools in those areas taking the vast majority of pupils on free school meals. Pupils at state comprehensive schools achieve very similar GCSE results overall regardless of whether they live in an area with grammar schools or not, according to the research (around 330 KS4 mean points for both selective areas and England overall for all pupils, and around 260 points for FSM pupils in both selective and non-selective areas). This shows that the mere existence of grammar schools in an area does not seem to drive up standards or reduce the gap between FSM-eligible pupils and the rest. Once the pupil intake of grammar schools is taken into account based on factors such as chronic poverty, ethnicity, home language, special educational needs, and age in the year group, grammar schools are no more or less effective than other schools. Pupils attending grammar schools are far less likely to have special educational needs and are less likely to have English as an additional language. They are also much more likely to be older in their year group (the 11+ test is not properly adjusting for age), to live in more affluent areas and they are more likely to be of Chinese or Pakistani origin. Conclusions: Every grammar school creates a much larger number of schools around it that cannot be comprehensive in intake, of necessity, because they are denied a supply of so many of the most high-attaining children. It does not matter whether these schools are officially designated as ‘secondary modern’ schools, or whether they offer different curricula or not. Also, the two sets of co-existing schools will and must differ in terms of a whole set of other pupil characteristics that appear to be related to selection at the 11+ but are not directly selected for. These include special educational needs, first language and, less obviously, ethnicity and poverty. The secondary modern schools also receive less funding per pupil within their local authorities than do grammar schools. Policy-makers always focus on grammar schools, whereas an equivalent claim to ‘we must have more grammar schools’ would be ‘we must have a lot more schools that are deprived of the most talented 15–20% of pupils in their catchment areas’. In areas with selective schools, the system is a clear driver towards increased social and economic segregation between schools, and all of the dangers that this entails – such as lower self-esteem and aspiration, poorer role models, poorer relationships and a distorted sense of justice. The policy of selective schools has little to recommend it. Dividing children into the most able and the rest from an early age does not appear to lead to better results for either group, even for the most disadvantaged. This means that the kind of social segregation experienced by children and young people in selective areas of the United Kingdom, and in selective schools and countries around the world, is for no clear gain. Put together, the findings mean that grammar schools in England endanger social cohesion for no clear improvement in overall results. The policy is a bad one and, far from increasing selection, the evidence-informed way forwards would be to phase out the existing 163 grammar schools in England. WEB LINK Grammar Schools In England: A New Analysis Of Social Segregation And Academic Outcomes KeywordsGrammar schools, England, social segregation, academic outcomes, pupil intake, nonselective state schools, special educational needs"
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Leadership

Grammar Schools In England: A New Analysis Of Social Segregation And Academic Outcomes

28 Mar 2018

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Folder: Leadership Briefings Issue 2.05 (17)"
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      string(5307) "ResourceSMARTER FUNDING FOR SCHOOLS WITH DEPRIVED PUPILSOriginal DocumentSmarter funding for schools with deprived pupils. Children from London’s poorest families are missing out despite the record levels of funding put into education because the government is failing to target the money where it is most needed. This report looks at the ‘attainment gap’ between deprived and non-deprived children and offers an explanation for why funding has not been as effective as it should have been. It considers how alternative approaches could provide greater opportunities for children to reach their full potential whatever their background.KeywordsDeprived families, achievement, school funding, attainment gapSummaryThere is a clear and well documented relationship between deprivation and poor attainment.It is evident at primary level (Key Stage 2) and increases significantly at secondary or GCSE level where, in some regions, non deprived pupils are twice as likely to outperform their deprived peers.While there has been a considerable financial investment in education, the under achievement of poor pupils remains a matter for serious concern. As part of the 2007 schools funding consultation, the government is looking at the way local education authorities distribute funding to schools as a factor in the slow progress in tackling under achievement.The current system of education funding does take some account of deprivation when distributing central allocations of funding between local authorities but the relationship between levels of funding and levels of deprivation is a very indirect one.This is largely a consequence of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG), which is the main body of school funding, being based on historical spend. As a result, it does not, and cannot, adequately take into account local variations in deprivation levels which will change over time, both in scale and between different areas.Key Findings:· Disadvantage both limits access to educational opportunities and reduces the ability of children to benefit from the schooling they do get.· There are several contributing factors associated with deprivation that have an impact on a child’s educational attainment. These include:· Deprivation has a direct impact on school absence· Household poverty has a significant effect on attainment· Lack of support at home· Lack of positive attitudes to education/learning from parents/guardians· Lack of basic language skills· The local environment may affect aspirations· Some deprived children have very complex needs· Deprived children are more likely to be excluded from school· Deprived children are likely to experience several types of deprivation simultaneously and over time· An Ofsted study identified that schools in disadvantaged areas have additional cost pressures as a consequence of the greater support required for children with special needs and children who do not have English as a first language. The study identified three main factors which resulted in extra costs:· School staff and non-staff costs, £980· Opportunity costs – costs associated with the diversion of resources away from their intended use, £300, and· ‘Unmet’ need – additional support necessary to meet pupil need, £500.ActionWhile the current Dedicated Schools Grant may partially reflect deprivation, it has several fundamental flaws which mean that funding is not necessarily getting to the local education authorities and, therefore, to the schools which need it most:1. The amount of funding which is allocated to tackle deprivation is too low: Historic under funding for pupils with multiple disadvantages means that the amount of funding for deprivation is insufficient 30. Although investment in education has risen significantly in real terms in the last 10 years, this critical area of unmet need has never been addressed. The DfES needs to explain why no attempt has been made to tackle this issue properly and it needs to consider the role this has had in perpetuating under achievement among the most deprived children.2. Funding for multiple deprivation needs to be targeted more effectively using different measures of disadvantage: Grant needs to reflect a much wider range of need to ensure greater accuracy in the distribution of deprivation funding.3. The distribution of funding should recognise that children who experience many different types of deprivation have disproportionately higher levels of under achievement: Funding needs to reflect that pupil attainment is affected more than the combined effect of different measures of pupil deprivation. It needs to be capable of dealing with this phenomenon by using an approach which measures multiplicative or exponential costs.The review of schools funding needs to address all these issues if it is to make equality of opportunity a reality for deprived children.NotesAuthorRaspal Chima, Questions PublishingDate CreatedApril 2007Enquiries to:rchima@qiis.co.uk (Authoring Unit)Month / YearPage 1 of 1©Birmingham City Council"
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Leadership

Smarter Funding For Schools With Deprived Pupils

26 Apr 2007

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      string(378) "... being of high ability. In selectivelocal authorities, only 32 per cent of high-ability childreneligible for free school meals (FSM – the Government’s mainmeasure of pupil disadvantage) attend grammar schoolscompared with 60 per cent of non-FSM pupils (Atkinson etal 2006). From these numbers it seems clear that grammarschools are ..."
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      string(5851) "17November 2007    Managing Schools Today   AdmissionsOver the next two months the race is on for parentsto find their child a place in a ‘good’ school.Over half a million pupils move from primaryto secondary school each year and for many pupils andparents this is the most stressful time in their educationcareer to date.Selection in our schools takes a variety of forms. Thisarticle explores the prevalence and impact of both overtand covert selection on the pupils it affects. It discusseshow and why selection ‘by the back door’ exists in Englandand analyses whether the Government’s recent reformsare likely to have much success at tackling the unintendedsegregation caused by the current system. Finally, thisarticle describes an alternative to our present admissionssystem which would provide a fairer and potentially moreeffective education system.Overt selection exists in 36 of England’s 150 localauthorities in the form of 164 grammar schools. Sowhat is the effect on outcomes of selecting pupils intoTighter rules on school admissions policies won’t beenough to stop selection by the back door, according toSarah Tough’s hard-hitting researchGuarding the entrancegrammar schools? Overall, grammars appear to havelittle or no overall impact in the areas in which they exist.Results show that while grammar school pupils come outwith better qualifications, this is counterpoised by thesuppressed results of those in the local authorities notattending grammar school. In terms of fairness of access,however, it is important to look at who attends theseschools – and it soon becomes clear that pupils with highersocio-economic backgrounds are usually the winners of aselection system.The intakes of grammar schools are considerablyunrepresentative in terms of the proportions of poorerpupils who attend, despite being of high ability. In selectivelocal authorities, only 32 per cent of high-ability childreneligible for free school meals (FSM – the Government’s mainmeasure of pupil disadvantage) attend grammar schoolscompared with 60 per cent of non-FSM pupils (Atkinson etal 2006). From these numbers it seems clear that grammarschools are unlikely to contribute positively to social 18AdmissionsManaging Schools Today    November 2007mobility. These findings are supported by research lookingat the impacts of the changes of the Scottish schoolingsystem in the mid-1970s, when all state-supported selectiveschools were abolished on social mobility rather than solelyon attainment outcomes (Iannelli & Paterson 2006). Thestudy concluded that the education reform had no effecton levels of social mobility.Here we can see that selection, and therefore segregation,by ability is not fair in terms of access, and that researchsuggests it is also inefficient.International evidence shows that countries withoutmuch school segregation often have high-achievingschoolchildren. Countries that overtly segregate pupilsthrough tracking systems, such as grammar schools, do nothave a higher average student performance but they doshow larger variation – and the more selective schoolingsystems are, the more important the socio-economicbackground of the pupil is to their outcomes. Thisrelationship appears not to be simply due to the fact thatcountries with more egalitarian schooling systems are oftenmore egalitarian in other ways that could affect studentoutcomes. International evidence shows that countrieswhere schools are less segregated by socio-economicbackground tend to have higher overall performance. Thissuggests that segregation causes inefficiency as well asinequity in school systems.In addition, evidence looking at how the ‘quality’ of apupil’s classroom peers influences that pupil’s outcomesshows a significant positive effect from having a highproportion of high-achieving pupils in the classroom. Thesefindings are consistent with most parents’ intuition thata school full of high-attaining pupils is likely to improvetheir child’s academic performance. However, evidence ofthe effect of ‘pupil mix’ on the overall effectiveness is oftencontradictory, so these studies neither allow proponents ofselection by ability to claim that it is a more efficient way oforganising education overall, nor do they allow opponentsto claim that selection is inefficient (as opposed to unfair).The other side of the selection debate is concerned with‘back door’ selection – which is likely to affect a largernumber of pupils and parents than the overt variety.The current accountability and regulatory frameworkmeans school leaders are under huge pressures toachieved good results. One effective way of achievingthis is by ensuring they have the best possible intake.One way schools could do this would be to discourageparents from ‘low-attaining’ backgrounds from applyingin the first place, for example by making school literaturedifficult to understand for parents with poor literacy. Inaddition, schools that can gain information about thesocio-economic background of pupils could use this intheir admission decisions to potentially select in this way.Evidence from the London School of Economics suggeststhat schools that are their own admission authoritiesdo have more potentially selective admissions criteriathan those schools whose admissions are set by the localauthority (West et al 2006).Evidence of covert selectionWhat is the evidence that some schools are covertly selectingtheir pupils? One way to explore whether schools may be covertlyselecting is to look at the composition of schools compared tothat of the areas in"
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Leadership

Guarding the entrance

30 Dec 2007

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Leadership Briefing 11.02(122)"
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      string(356) "... achieve the expectedstandard in all of reading, writing and mathematics compared to 50% of boys. ■ Girls outperform boys at the expected standard in reading, grammar, punctuation and spelling andwriting. The gap is largest in writing. ■ There is no difference in attainment in mathematics at the expected standard. In ..."
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Leadership Briefing 11.02(122)"
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      string(4242) "Leadership BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries – a weeklyservice of essential summaries,in-depth reports and criticalanalysis that’s new and relevantto education, linked to originalsource documents.NATIONAL CURRICULUM ASSESSMENTS:KEY STAGE 2, 2016KeywordsNationalCurriculumAssessments,Key Stage 2,tests, interimframeworks,teacherassessment,attainment,performingareas, children,standards,reading, writing,mathematicsSummaryIn 2016, the new more challenging national curriculum was assessed by new tests and interimframeworks for teacher assessment. Results are no longer reported as levels: each pupilreceives their test results as a scaled score and teacher assessments based on the standardsin the interim framework. This DfE statistical first release (SFR) presents attainment in theseassessments.This DfE report shows that London pupils outperformed the rest of England in this year’s tougherprimary school tests, with a 28 percentage point gap between the best and worst performing localauthorities.In the London borough of Richmond, 67% of 11-year-olds reached the required standard in reading,writing and maths, according to provisional results.But only 39% of 11-year-olds in Peterborough met the standard.This year’s tests, taken by 11-year-olds in England in May, were more demanding than those inprevious years and based on a new curriculum.Overall, just over 53% of children in state-funded schools met the grade in all three sets of tests.In 2015, 80% met the standard – but those figures are not regarded as being comparable becausethey were under the previous system that was dropped this year.Last year, under the old system, the gap between the highest performing areas, at 90%, and thelowest, at 73%, was narrower than this year.The detailed provisional figures for this year show the highest performing local authoritiesconcentrated in London, and parts of the North East and South East.The poorest performing are in the West Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, the East Midlands andEast of England.This is a similar spread to that seen in recent years, according to the government statistical release,which also points out that that there was a small number of local authorities with “more extremevalues”.Week Commencing 5th September2016https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/549432/SFR39_2016_text.pdfhttps://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/549432/SFR39_2016_text.pdfLeadership BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries – a weeklyservice of essential summaries,in-depth reports and criticalanalysis that’s new and relevantto education, linked to originalsource documents.Main Findings: ■ Over half of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics. 53% ofpupils reached the new expected standard and 5% reached a high standard in reading, writingand mathematics. ■ Fewer pupils reach the expected standard in reading than in other subjects. Attainment at theexpected standard in the tests is highest in grammar, punctuation and spelling at 72% andlowest in reading at 66%. 74% of pupils were assessed by teachers as working at the expectedstandard in writing, higher than in any of the test subjects. ■ Achievement of a high score is highest in grammar, punctuation and spelling at 23% and lowest inmathematics at 17%. The percentage of pupils working at greater depth in writing is 15%. ■ As in previous years, girls outperform boys in most subjects. 57% of girls achieve the expectedstandard in all of reading, writing and mathematics compared to 50% of boys. ■ Girls outperform boys at the expected standard in reading, grammar, punctuation and spelling andwriting. The gap is largest in writing. ■ There is no difference in attainment in mathematics at the expected standard. In 2015, boysoutperformed girls at level 4b or above in mathematics.WEB LINKNational Curriculum Assessments: Key Stage 2, 2016https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/549432/SFR39_2016_text.pdf"
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      ["fullyHighlighted"]=>
      bool(false)
      ["matchedWords"]=>
      array(6) {
        [0]=>
        string(10) "attainment"
        [1]=>
        string(3) "gap"
        [2]=>
        string(7) "grammar"
        [3]=>
        string(7) "schools"
        [4]=>
        string(5) "local"
        [5]=>
        string(11) "authorities"
      }
    }
    ["categories"]=>
    array(1) {
      [0]=>
      array(3) {
        ["value"]=>
        string(10) "Leadership"
        ["matchLevel"]=>
        string(4) "none"
        ["matchedWords"]=>
        array(0) {
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Leadership

National Curriculum Assessments: Key Stage 2, 2016

2 Sep 2016