Where now for equity and effectiveness policy?

This chapter considers solutions for a more effective education policy. Education mostly appears to reflect society, which suggests that the root cause of inequality is at least partly not educational. Education policy cannot be expected to solve issues such as child poverty alone, in the short term, or even at all. This means that education policy has to be humbler, but it still has important roles to play — in ensuring that inequalities are not worsened by the education system, and by promoting structures and interventions that can ‘compensate for society’, to some extent. In this light, this chapter provides examples of specific policy proposals, considers where policy-makers have erred, and shows how policy can work with research.

The wider outcomes of schools as societies

This chapter looks at how education and experiences at school can influence outcomes and attributes other than cognitive attainment. After all, while attainment is important, it is only one possible educational outcome of schooling. Others such as wellbeing, enjoyment of learning, or preparation for adult life could be just as important. Although interventions and policies to enhance wellbeing, resilience, or engagement may not convert into higher attainment, they can still lead to positive outcomes in their own right. Thus, the topics addressed in this chapter fall into two main categories. It looks at formative interactions at school between adults and students, and between student peers as well as their link to students' intentions for the future, their sense of justice, and expectations of life. The chapter then evaluates interventions intended to improve students' non-cognitive outcomes such as communication, teamwork, and confidence.

Differential outcomes at school and beyond

This chapter presents the simple patterns of a two-decade study into participation in education and attainment after the age of 16, in higher education, and throughout adult learners' lives. These findings are derived from the apparent differences in attainment by various social groups, girls and boys, types of schools, regions, and countries. The indicators covered in this chapter are the differences linked to family income, differences linked to special education needs (SEN), differences linked to precise age-in-year, differences linked to ethnicity, differences linked to first language, differences linked to recorded sex, participation in higher education, and finally, adult participation in education and training.

Widening participation to other opportunities

This chapter brings place and time more strongly to the fore in explanatory models of learning and distinguishes between biographical and historical changes. It also tries to distinguish between the determinants of, and barriers to, participation. The chapter provides two explanations: one based on choice and one based on structural and other determinants, arguing that either or both is possible. People's patterns of participation may be determined by prior (and future) events in their lives, or these events may create a personal culture that colours the objective opportunity structure in such a way that people's choices are frequently predictable. In fact, rather than seeing these two mechanisms of agency as alternatives, the chapter points out that they could be different descriptions of the same events, with both contributing to our understanding. The first appears more naturally when analysing in-depth data as narratives, while the second appears more naturally when the same data is used to create predictive models.

Learning beyond institutions

This chapter summarises in three strands the common theme of learning or raising academic attainment outside of normal school (or other educational institution) hours. The strands concern out-of-school hours interventions, trying to enhance parental involvement in their child's school work, and learning or self-teaching entirely separate from institutions. This chapter shows how relatively formal activities seemingly unrelated to attainment can benefit attainment at school. However, they do not seem to be able to reduce the poverty gradient in attainment. Moreover, using parents more as a resource for their children's education may not have a beneficial impact at all, and will increase rather than reduce the poverty gradient, unless parents are brought into activities conducted in schools — which is then no longer ‘education otherwise’ but just more school.

School improvement

This chapter concerns school improvement. It argues that, until recently, school improvement policies have either been created on little robust evidence at all, or have simply been based on the correlates of the kinds of school effectiveness studies described in the previous chapter. This is a very misleading approach because high- and low-attaining schools might differ in a range of ways that are unrelated to whether their results are better or worse. This includes their type (such as academy or community school), their location, and even their décor (potted plants for example). School improvement policies have also been influenced by highly vocal single studies, and developers acting as agents selling their wares via conferences and similar. Teacher action research is widely used but is not really research let alone action research as originally devised. As such, none of these are appropriate for advising national or local policy on improving schools.

Differential attainment at school

This chapter looks in more detail at some of the patterns of attainment in Chapter 3, such as by sex and area of residence. While these patterns change over time, all of them give further clues as to why the patterns themselves exist. As such, this chapter looks at some of the evidence on what were ‘moral panics’ at the time, such as the failure of pupils in Wales and the increasing under-achievement of boys and of parts of the United Kingdom. It also suggests that using the more sensitive measure of the duration of poverty (years with free school meals, or FSM) has much to recommend it. Using the number of years a student has been eligible for FSM, and how segregated a school system is by poverty and other indicators of disadvantage, it is possible to explain substantive differences such as the apparently superior attainment of schools in the South of England compared to the North.

The supply of professionals

This chapter considers the reported shortages of scientists and school teachers in the United Kingdom. STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, students, and teachers occupy a privileged position in UK government education policy because of their economic importance, but are in short supply and/or reducing in proportion to the number of available opportunities. As with scientists, there appears to be a constant demand for more teachers in the United Kingdom and other developed countries. This chapter shows that whereas UK public spending has declined in real terms since the economic downturn of 2008 onwards, one area where policy-makers have claimed that spending has been sustained and even increased is encouraging the supply of new STEM graduates. The UK government proposals to develop the nation's scientific skills base largely lie in increasing the supply of young people into the STEM professions. Similarly, a whole range of policy initiatives have been proposed and tried to increase the supply of teachers. This chapter shows, however, the issue of shortages has yet to be effectively addressed.

Differential school effects

This chapter explains why no type of school within the national school system has been found to be more effective than any other with equivalent students. It discusses the promising value-added (VA) approach, which judges schools by the progress that their pupils make during attendance at the school — not their absolute levels of attainment. Data on all pupils in the relevant school population is used to predict as accurately as possible how well each pupil will score in a subsequent test of attainment. Any difference between the predicted and observed test result is then used as a residual. The averaged residuals for each school are termed the school's ‘effect’, and are intended to represent the average amount by which pupils in that school progress more or less when compared to equivalent pupils in all other schools. This judgement about progress is intended to be independent of the raw-score figures, making it fairer than assessment by raw scores. Since this ‘school effect’ is deemed a characteristic of the school, not its specific cohort of pupils, it should be reasonably consistent over time.

The nature of the evidence assembled

This chapter discusses the conduct of education research, as well as some methodological innovations that have been proposed and used. A simple general approach to research is described; including a ‘sieve’, or a set of criteria, used to assist in the estimation of trustworthiness of any research study and the number of counterfactual cases needed to disturb a finding (NNTD). The chapter describes these and other innovations to generate evidence used in the following chapters; such as the mean absolute deviation and the Gorard segregation index. Furthermore, it presents an outline of additional research methods used in the following chapters.