Yesterday the Guardian published news of a study by London University’s UCL and Kings which shows that it is social background which determines pupils’ progress. The still unpublished report is based on national test attainment scores for nearly one million children, and shows that a child’s postcode acts as the best predictor of its success in school.
But what, ultimately, is the point in Professors Richard Webber and Tim Butler’s research? They present us with a depressing confirmation of what we already know, that the better off will always do better, and basically leave it at that – class matters in class. The Guardian article declared the research to be somehow revolutionary, finally giving a ‘statistical backbone’ to what had 'never been proved'. But there is actually already a lot of evidence on the impact of class, it has been proved mutlitple times, making Webber and Butler’s research little more than another vertebra – or, with its apparent lack of constructiveness, just a spare rib.
Yet there is something which can be done to narrow the learning gap and that’s scrapping primary league tables. As Webber and Butler point out even the government’s value-added measures for schools fail to factor in all influences on learning, as will the new contextual value-added measures. We can make approximate bands which factor in influences to achievement, and Webber and Butler claim to have come up with more accurate versions. But these approximations do not show how good schools with less advantaged intakes are as attempts to standardise circumstance are inevitably going to fail. More worryingly, attempts to do so fail the already worst off in terms of learning opportunity. Whilst good primaries in middle-class areas can take testing in their stride, league table culture all too often forces potentially good schools in deprived areas to focus on often arbitrary targets. This inevitably leads to teaching to the test – lowering learning potential even further. And widening that class gap.
Comments (1)
The report clearly hits the headlines because of the way it addresses some of the issues of the Government's proposed Education reforms, rather than because the whole report is either available or draws those conclusions, so we need to be careful in making assumptions about what the report as a whole claims.
However, the Guardian report jumps on the "structural" factors rather than any "agency" explanations, and provides a rather generalist approach to explaining the subject matter.
Yes, class affects how well a child does at school, but there are more reasons than simple postcode or address. There are structural and agency explanations about _why_ class has that effect which aren't covered in any detail here, but include such factors as: parental involvement, expectations, quality of schools, as well as individuals' responses to both their own education and that of the system in general, and to simplify it down to postcode level merely dumbs everybody down to the lowest common denominator.
Yes, there are issues surrounding poverty and quality that need addressing, but the relevence this has to the educational system is actually the other way around: improving educational facilities will help those in the lower classes disproportionately (which is of course the point) and we should focus on that rather than insisting that our social status is the primary driver behind our possible educational achievement (which is the moral equivalent of throwing our hands up in the air and saying it isn't worth investing in education for the lower classes).
Posted by Dave Harris | March 2, 2006 12:09 PM
Posted on March 2, 2006 12:09