Elite School Education Group Policy and Low-Performing Schools in China

Education inequality has been a challenging issue worldwide, and disparity across schools constitutes a significant proportion of total inequality. Effective policies to turn around low-performing schools (LPS) are therefore of great importance to both governments and students. The Elite School Education Group (ESEG) policy is an emerging one, and it has quickly become very influential in China, a country with one of the largest and most diversified education systems in the world. Under this policy, elite public schools (EPS), which have exceptionally enriched educational resources (i.e., high-quality teachers, strong principal leadership, excellent school cultures, etc.), are encouraged by the government to build school groups with LPS. Within the school group under the elite school brand, branch schools (i.e., the previous LPS) can share all kinds of resources from the EPS (including teachers and principals), and they may even utilize the prestige of the brand itself as a means to attract high-performing students. The ESEG policy enables the delivery of multiple turnaround interventions to LPS in an autonomous way, through building partnerships between EPS and LPS. While some LPS are successfully turned around, some are not. It depends on the effectiveness of the reforms undertaken in the branch schools. Of particular importance is the access to strong principal leadership, excellent teachers, and the school cultures from EPS. Incentives for EPS to participate in this reform include obtaining flexibility in personnel management, expanding school scale and influence, and mobilizing other resources. Despite the potential positive influence on the branch schools, the ESEG policy may have a more complex influence on the entire education ecology than initially expected. Indeed, there are now some concerns that the ESEG is creating new LPS, because more and more high-performing students are drawn out of normal schools and attracted to the ESEG-partnered schools during admission. Thus, the effectiveness of the ESEG policy should not be solely based on attracting high-performing students, but on improving overall education quality.

Intensive Teaching: Examining Teachers’ Professional Pressures and Pedagogical Practices at an Elite School

This article asks the following questions: What pressures do teachers face from parents and senior administrators? How do the pressures teachers face from parents and senior administrators affect how they teach students? Specifically, how does this affect the methods they engage in to generate ‘good’ student outcomes? It answers these questions by analysing interviews with 24 high school teachers at an elite international school in Bangalore, a city in southwest India. This article argues that the pressures teachers face from senior administrators and parents to produce high-achieving students result in them engaging in intensive teaching practices. These practices represent teachers’ attempts to produce students capable of earning high grades and entrance into competitive colleges and universities. This article extends our understanding of the factors that shape teachers’ pedagogical practices by making explicit connections between affluent parenting practices and the professional roles of teachers at elite schools. As such, this article makes important contributions to the literature on the sociology of education and teaching.

Effectively Dealing with Bullying in Elite Schools: Principals' Perceptions and Practices

The purpose of this study was to explore principals' perceptions and practices to deal with students who show disruptive and aggressive behavior in schools by using qualitative research methods. The conceptual framework of the study was based on six different approaches to effectively deal with bullying in educational institutions. A basic qualitative research design was used, and twelve elite school principals were selected through the purposive sampling technique. The framework analysis of the interview data revealed that principals' understanding of what could be done to address bullying was not limited. They were well acquainted with the alternatives or options to deal with a problematic situation, and they creatively mixed different approaches according to their own perceptions and the nature of the problem. However, most of the participants dealt with students while strengthening their confidence and making them independent through counselling techniques.

Jypp, Dompa och Jackson Pollock - Berättelser om plats, förortiska och överklass i ett innerstadsgymnasium

Jypp, Dompa and Jackson Pollock: Narratives on place, urban vernaculars, and upper class at a prestigious upper secondary school. Labelling a linguistic style by appointing it to certain groups of speakers and where they live can be a deeply problematic enterprise as both identities, language use and space become fixed and limited. In Sweden the speech style called Rinkeby Swedish (RS) has become an icon of ethnic Otherness, educational failure, and of an aggressive sexist and homophobic masculinity – ascribed to a fixed locality in the outskirts of the big cities. In this paper we have turned our gaze towards a place that have typically not been associated with RS before: a Stockholm elite school. The analysis reveals how a group of students, illustrated by how the participant Wille, perform authenticity and indexically anchor their linguistic practices and epistemics in various linguistic contexts. In a case study, we explore how the participants talk about and use not one but many different linguistic styles. We argue that the participants employ these styles as resources to comment on locality as well as social hierarchies in the school and the society at large.

Elite School Students’ Perceptions of Human Rights: An Interview Study

Since independence, Pakistan has been struggling to deal with its two focal phenomena. One is the culture of elite governance whereby precious chosen few can influence all societal and administrative segments of the country, and the second related to the issues in the realization of human rights. The realization of fundamental, social, cultural, and political rights depends upon how the ruling elites perceive it. Keeping in view the scenario, this qualitative study was set to explore the perceptions of elite students regarding status and issues in the realization of human rights in Pakistan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five purposely selected students from elite schools. Thematic analysis revealed that most students have a superficial understanding of human rights. Though they believed that hierarchies, corruption, religious extremism, and nepotism should come to an end for the beginning of a just society, their discourse held class interest. Transparency, accountability, and good governance were not stressed. A society with equal human rights requires participation by elites which is characterized by a greater sense of social justice, humanity, responsibility, and accountability.

The Sankara Nethralaya Tamil Nadu Essilor Myopia (STEM) Study—Defining a Threshold for Non-Cycloplegic Myopia Prevalence in Children

The aim of this study was to investigate the agreement between cycloplegic and non-cycloplegic autorefraction with an open-field auto refractor in a school vision screening set up, and to define a threshold for myopia that agrees with the standard cycloplegic refraction threshold. The study was conducted as part of the Sankara Nethralaya Tamil Nadu Essilor Myopia (STEM) study, which investigated the prevalence, incidence, and risk factors for myopia among children in South India. Children from two schools aged 5 to 15 years, with no ocular abnormalities and whose parents gave informed consent for cycloplegic refraction were included in the study. All the children underwent visual acuity assessment (Pocket Vision Screener, Elite school of Optometry, India), followed by non-cycloplegic and cycloplegic (1% tropicamide) open-field autorefraction (Grand Seiko, WAM-5500). A total of 387 children were included in the study, of whom 201 were boys. The mean (SD) age of the children was 12.2 (±2.1) years. Overall, the mean difference between cycloplegic and non-cycloplegic spherical equivalent (SE) open-field autorefraction measures was 0.34 D (limits of agreement (LOA), 1.06 D to −0.38 D). For myopes, the mean difference between cycloplegic and non-cycloplegic SE was 0.13 D (LOA, 0.63D to −0.36D). The prevalence of myopia was 12% (95% CI, 8% to 15%) using the threshold of cycloplegic SE ≤ −0.50 D, and was 14% (95% CI, 11% to 17%) with SE ≤ −0.50 D using non-cycloplegic refraction. When myopia was defined as SE of ≤−0.75 D under non-cycloplegic conditions, there was no difference between cycloplegic and non-cycloplegic open-field autorefraction prevalence estimates (12%; 95% CI, 8% to 15%; p = 1.00). Overall, non-cycloplegic refraction underestimates hyperopia and overestimates myopia; but for subjects with myopia, this difference is minimal and not clinically significant. A threshold of SE ≤ −0.75 D agrees well for the estimation of myopia prevalence among children when using non-cycloplegic refraction and is comparable with the standard definition of cycloplegic myopic refraction of SE ≤ −0.50 D.

Does Attending a More Elite School Lead to Better Labor Market Outcomes?

College football prospects in the market for an athletic scholarship face similar career-altering choices as traditional academic students when selecting a college, however, the market they operate in is very different. They are actively recruited by university coaches and closely observed by a college sports scouting industry. Their choice of school is highly anticipated and publicized within college sport culture. College football is no doubt a lucrative industry, particularly for the elite university football programs, but one may want to know if the athletic scholars themselves gain in any career measurable way by attending a more elite university football program. This analysis uses the scouting and coaches screening information to form a baseline control for pre-college ability and then estimates the value-added from choosing a more selective football program by measuring 3 observable football oriented career outcomes: 1) the probability of receiving an invite to the NFL Combine, 2) an objective metric for strength and conditioning, and 3) a player's overall order from the NFL draft. Evidence shows that recruits who choose a more selective university football program have a higher probability of receiving an invite to the NFL Combine. However, once at the Combine, there is no evidence that more selective university football programs produce better athletes based upon standardized strength and conditioning tests. Evidence also suggests that NFL employers utilize the objective information they gain at the NFL Combine in their draft decisions, in which case, the premium enjoyed from the initial Combine invite is attenuated. If NFL teams update the information obtained from the Combine into their draft decisions, then there is no evidence attending a more selective football program generates value-added to a recruit’s ability and thus, their post-college career. Additionally, there is suggestive evidence that highly sought after football recruits are made worse off by the recruiting process in general, holding objective measures of ability constant.