Category: Achievement

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Achievement Educational Administration and Leadership Primary School Education Secondary School Education

Mind the gap

A new research report published by the Department for Education explores success and good practice in supporting the achievement of disadvantaged pupils, and concludes that schools have meaningful scope to make a difference.

In England, the performance gap between pupils from more- and less-advantaged backgrounds is one of the largest among OECD countries. This research used school-level data, surveys, and interviews to identify schools that have successfully narrowed the gap, common features across these schools, and what lessons can be learned from success stories.

The authors found that between one- and two-thirds of the variance between schools in terms of disadvantaged pupils’ achievement can be explained by school-level characteristics, suggesting that intake and circumstance are influential but do not totally determine outcomes.

Seven building blocks for success were identified:

  • Promote an ethos of achievement for all pupils, rather than stereotyping disadvantaged pupils as a group with less potential to succeed.
  • Have an individualised approach to addressing barriers to learning and emotional support at an early stage, rather than providing access to generic support and focusing on pupils nearing the end of key stages.
  • Focus on high-quality teaching first rather than add-on strategies and activities outside school hours.
  • Focus on outcomes for individual pupils rather than on providing strategies.
  • Deploy the best staff to support disadvantaged pupils; develop skills and roles of teachers and Teaching Assistants rather than using additional staff who do not know the pupils well.
  • Make decisions based on data and respond to evidence using frequent, rather than one-off, assessment and decision points.
  • Have clear, responsive leadership: setting ever-higher aspirations and devolving responsibility for raising achievement to all staff, rather than accepting low aspirations and variable performance.

The report also has an accompanying briefing for school leaders which summarises the findings, identifies school risk factors and how schools can address them, and provides a list of suggested next steps.

 

Macleod, S., Sharp, C., Bernardinelli, D., Skipp, A., & Higgins, S. (2015). Supporting the attainment of disadvantaged pupils: articulating success and good practice: Research report November 2015. London, England: Department for Education.… Read the rest

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Achievement Kindergarten Primary School Education

New analysis of the attainment gap

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published a new analysis of the state of the attainment gap in the UK. Using data from Key Stage 2 to predict how the attainment gap is likely to shift in the next five years, it reveals that there will be little or no headway in closing the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates in the next five years.

Improvements in primary schools over the past few years mean that:

  • The gap between the proportion of disadvantaged pupils with at least a good pass at GCSE in English and Mathematics and all other pupils is set to reduce from 24 percentage points to 21.5 between 2017 and 2021.
  • However, there will be little change in Attainment 8 (which measures average achievement in GCSE across eight subjects) and Progress 8 (which measures students’ progress between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4 across eight subjects) gaps.
  • The Attainment 8 score gap of 11 points in 2017 will remain in 2021, while for Progress 8 the attainment gap is set to increase a little: from 14.8 points in 2017 to 15.6 points in 2021.

The analysis emphasises that even small improvements – just one or two GCSE passes compared to no qualifications – can have significant increases on a young person’s lifetime productivity returns and in national wealth. This highlights the importance of continuing to focus on improving results for currently low-attaining pupils.

The report also contains 15 key lessons from the first six years of the EEF on closing the attainment gap.

 

The Education Endowment Foundation (2018). The attainment gap 2017. London, England: The Education Endowment Foundation.… Read the rest

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Achievement Programme Evaluation Secondary School Education

Is personalised learning effective?

A new research brief by John F Pane and colleagues at the RAND Corporation asks the question: “Does personalised learning improve pupil learning more than other educational approaches?” As part of their report, the authors present findings from an evaluation of personalised learning (PL) schools conducted by RAND Corporation researchers for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The research team analysed maths and reading scores for approximately 5,500 pupils in 32 US schools that received funding from the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) initiative to support highly personalised approaches to learning. These schools took the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) mathematics and reading assessments for one academic year: autumn 2014 to spring 2015. The research team compared the achievement of pupils in PL schools with matched peers attending non-PL schools and national norms.

Key findings from the research brief include:

  • Early evidence suggests that PL can improve achievement for pupils, regardless of their starting level of achievement.
  • Benefits of PL may take some time to emerge. Analyses suggest that effects may be more positive after schools have experience implementing PL.
  • To date, the field lacks evidence on which practices are most effective or what policies must be in place to maximise the benefits.

The authors note that additional research is needed using more rigorous experimental studies.

 

Pane, J. F., Steiner, E. D., Baird, M. D., Hamilton, L. S., & Pane, J. D. (2017). How does personalized learning affect student achievement?. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.… Read the rest

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Achievement Kindergarten Primary School Education Secondary School Education

The long-term impact of effective teaching

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Peter Tymms and colleagues at Durham University’s Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring conducted a study of 40,000 children in England to examine what impact effective teaching in the first year of school has on achievement at the end of compulsory teaching at age 16.

Children’s early reading and maths development were measured at the start of school, at age four, using the Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS) assessments. They were assessed again at the end of their first school year and at ages 7, 11 and 16. By assessing children at the beginning and end of their first year, the researchers were able to identify effective classes – defined defined as a class where children made much larger than average gains from ages 4 to 5, controlling for pretests and deprivation.

The study, published in School Effectiveness and School Improvement, found that:

  • Children who were taught well in their first year of school went on to achieve better GCSE results in English and maths at age 16 (effect size = +0.2).
  • Long-term benefits in achievement were also reported for those children who were in effective classes in Key Stages 1 and 2, however, these were not as large as those seen in the first year of school.

The study concludes that the first year of school presents an important opportunity to have a positive impact on children’s long-term academic outcomes.

 

Source: Tymms, P., Merrell, C., & Bailey, K. (2017). The long-term impact of effective teaching. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 1–20.… Read the rest

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Achievement Kindergarten Language Development Maths and Science Learning Primary School Education Secondary School Education

The evidence on achievement gaps over time: Contained but not closing

Research has shown that socioeconomic status (SES) is the highest predictor of children’s academic achievement. Moreover, the achievement gap between low- and high-SES pupils begins early in their schooling. How effective have initiatives been at narrowing the achievement gap? Emma Garcia at the Education Policy Institute in the US and Elaine Weiss at the Broader Bolder Approach to Education examined two cohorts of kindergartners (Year 1), those who started in 1998 and those who started in 2010. They were looking at the relationship between socio-economic status and kindergartners’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills at the start of their school years to see if the achievement gap had narrowed in this twelve-year span.

Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics – Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies of the Kindergarten Classes of 1998-99 and 2010-11, Garcia and Weiss found that the achievement gap did not change between 1998 to 2010 among pupils living in the US’s highest and lowest economic strata, a difference of 1.17 standard deviations in reading and 1.25 standard deviations in maths, despite parents’ increased involvement in educating their children across all SES groups and the implementation of programmes designed to narrow these gaps. Interestingly, they did find that the percentage of children living in poverty grew during that time, yet the achievement gap did not grow, nor did it narrow. They found that greater parental involvement and children’s pre-school attendance contained the gap, but did not do enough to eliminate the overall effects of poverty on pupil achievement.

The researchers then reviewed twelve programmes designed to narrow the achievement gap. The most effective programmes addressed not only academics, but ensured the children were getting proper meals and healthcare and provided other supports for children and their families.

 

Sources: García, E. & Weiss, E. (2017). Education Inequalities at the School Starting Gate – Gaps, Trends, and Strategies to Address them. DC: Economic Policy Institute.… Read the rest

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Achievement Maths and Science Learning Primary School Education Secondary School Education

Homework and achievement in math and science

Fan and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to review the homework-achievement relationship in math and science given that the effect of subject matters had not been carefully examined.

Among more than two thousand studies related to homework and achievement available on digital databases between 1986 and 2015, 28 studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria were synthesized. Participants of the included studies were primary school, middle school or high school students. Key findings of those are as follows:

  • Overall, there was a small and positive relationship between homework and achievement in math and science.
  • The homework-achievement relationships were stronger in the studies operationally defined homework as “homework completion”, “homework grade”, and “homework effort” than the studies defined that as “homework frequency” and “time spent on homework”.
  • The relationship for elementary and high school students was stronger than that for middle school students.
  • The homework-achievement relationship was the strongest in studies involving US students while it was the weakest in studies involving Asian students. The authors suggested this seemingly counterintuitive result might be attributed to private tutoring that has been weakening the role of formal education in these countries.

The authors remarked that they only included studies written in English and there was an insufficient number of studies for them to consider the moderation effect of some important features, such as gender and complexity of homework assignments.

 

Source : Fan, H., Xu, J., Cai, Z., He, J., & Fan, X. (2017). Homework and students’ achievement in math and science: A 30-year meta-analysis, 1986–2015. Educational Research Review, 20, 35-54.… Read the rest