The effectiveness of English secondary schools for pupils of different ability levels

Lorraine Dearden (), John Micklewright () and Anna Vignoles

No 11-06, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: 'League table' information on school effectiveness in England generally relies on either a comparison of the average outcomes of pupils by school, e.g. mean exam scores, or on estimates of the average value added by each school. These approaches assume that the information parents and policy-makers need most to judge school effectiveness is the average achievement level or gain in a particular school. Yet schools can be differentially effective for children with differing levels of prior attainment. We present evidence on the extent of differential effectiveness in English secondary schools, and find that even the most conservative estimate suggests that around one quarter of schools in England are differentially effective for students of differing prior ability levels. This affects an even larger proportion of children as larger schools are more likely to be differentially effective.

Keywords: school effectiveness; school choice; value added; England (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-07-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.ucl.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp1106.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Effectiveness of English Secondary Schools for Pupils of Different Ability Levels (2011)
Working Paper: The Effectiveness of English Secondary Schools for Pupils of Different Ability Levels (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qss:dqsswp:1106

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London Quantitative Social Science, Social Research Institute, 55-59 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0NU. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr Neus Bover Fonts ().