Suchergebnisse

Educational inequalities are evident even before children start school. Those connected to disadvantage widen out as children progress through the education system and into the labour market. We document various forms of educational inequality. We then review available evidence for England about the impact of school-level policies on achievement and their potential for reducing the socio-economic gap. We discuss evaluation evidence under four main themes: school resources; market incentives; school autonomy; and pedagogical approaches.

AbstractFurther education and sixth form colleges are key institutions for facilitating skill acquisition among 16–19 year olds in the UK. They enrol half a school cohort after completion of their lower secondary education, and this includes a disproportionate number from low‐income backgrounds. Yet little is known about what could improve performance in these institutions. We conduct the world's first management practices survey in such institutions, and match this to administrative longitudinal data on over 40,000 students. Value‐added regressions with rich controls suggest that structured management matters for educational outcomes, especially for students from low‐income backgrounds. For this group, in a hypothetical scenario where an individual is moved from a college at the 10th percentile of management practices to the 90th, this would be associated with 8% higher probability of achieving a good high school qualification, nearly half of the educational gap between those from poor and non‐poor backgrounds. Hence improving management practices may be an important channel for reducing inequalities.

The change of government in 2010 provoked a large structural change in the English education landscape. Unexpectedly, the new government offered primary schools the chance to have 'the freedom and the power to take control of their own destiny', with better performing schools given a green light to fast track convert to become an academy school. In England, schools that become academies have more freedom over many ways in which they operate, including curriculum design, budgets, staffing issues and the shape of the academic year. However, the change to allow primary school academisation has been controversial. This paper reports estimates of the causal effect of academy enrolment on primary school pupils. While the international literature provides growing evidence on the effect of school autonomy in a variety of contexts, little is known about the effect of autonomy on primary schools (which are typically much smaller than secondary schools) and in contexts where the converting school is not deemed to be failing or disadvantaged. The key findings are that English primary schools did change their mode of operation after the exogenous policy change, utilising more autonomy and changing spending behaviour, but this did not lead to improved pupil performance.

Background: Political devolution occurred in the UK in 1998-99, following many years in which some degree of policy administration had been devolved to the four nations. Since devolution, all four countries of the UK have pursued increasingly divergent education policies. This is true in England in particular, where diversity, choice and competition have become a key focus of education policy. This political divergence between the four nations gives us the opportunity to appraise differences and similarities in educational policies and outcomes in the four UK nations. Purpose: This article is a comparative review of the education reforms of the constituent countries of the UK, with particular focus on value for money. The main aims of the article are to (1) outline the key differences in the educational systems in terms of school type, choice and competition, educational resources and pedagogy; (2) describe how the countries compare in terms of educational attainment during compulsory schooling years; (3) examine inequalities in educational attainment, such as by gender and socio-economic status, and how the different countries compare on these measures; and (4) examine existing evidence on the effectiveness and value for money of different education policies and programmes in the different countries. Sources of evidence: We use a variety of sources of evidence to achieve these aims. We undertake a literature review of the existing evidence on the effectiveness and value for money of different programmes and policies that have taken place across the UK. We also collate and undertake an analysis of data on educational outcomes from published statistics sourced from the national statistics offices of each country. It is easier to be confident about comparisons based on international data sets because in this case all students will have taken exactly the same test, so we also compile and analyse survey data from international surveys of educational attainment such as PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS. Main argument: We argue that while the systems of the four countries of the UK are becoming increasingly divergent, there are still many similarities. This is borne out in the evidence on educational outcomes, which show many similarities between the four countries. Because of these similarities, the positive impacts of many of the policies and programmes adopted in England may have relevance for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Conclusions: We find evidence that increasing school resources improves results, and also that more targeted spending benefits able pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. We also find positive results of several programmes. Evaluating the education policies of the four nations in terms of value for money - and therefore whether they have scope to be adopted - represents a bigger challenge. Whilst the value for money of certain policies - such as the literacy hour - can be reasonably well measured, for many other policies, value for money is hard to pin down accurately. However, this forms an important direction for future research.