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Educational Achievement: Professor Becky Francis

In this short (10 minute) interview, (recorded in 2009 in what looks and sounds like a cupboard somewhere...apologies for the less than pristine sound quality and video), Professor Becky Francis talks about her research into educational achievement.

The film touches on a number of areas in the sociology of education that teachers and students will find useful:

* Methods in education (qualitative and quantitative)

* Characteristics of high-achieving pupils

* Managing and maintaining identities

* Education and social policy

* Lads - and ladettes

* Chinese pupils and achievement - pressures and processes.

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Educational Achievement: Professor Becky Francis

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Educational Achievement: Professor Becky Francis In this short (10 minute) interview, (recorded in 2009 in what looks and sounds like a cupboard somewhere...apologies for the less than pristine sound quality and video), Professor Becky Francis talks about her research into educational achievement.

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Government policy

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A handful of grammar schools are to receive a £50m boost to expand their pupil numbers. To qualify for the funding, schools had to submit plans on how they would try and increase the number of poorer pupils.

In total, 16 grammar schools are to be given a share of the £50m selective school expansion fund to create 4,000 additional places for pupils from the poorest backgrounds, according to The Times.

But the move has come under fire after it was revealed that just 2% of their pupils admitted to the grammar schools awarded the funding classify as disadvantaged. Headteachers at cash-strapped comprehensive schools also spoke out in protest - given that in real terms, per-pupil spending is in significant decline. This has led to many headteachers increasingly asking parents for cash donations, with some schools forced to cut staff.

The announcement has reignited a heated debate over the merits of selection at 11+ in the English schools system. Those in favour of grammar schools say they are a positive influence on the quality of education and the standards achieved by children who attend schools in selective areas. Those against say they are socially divisive and remnants of an outdated system that disproportionately benefits middle class children.

'Unjust' and 'unfair'

Stories of working class children whose life chances have been transformed by attending a grammar school may be aplenty, but anecdotes supporting social mobility arguments don't make for good policy.

There would also be something wrong if high performing grammar schools couldn't get good results for very able children - which indeed they do - even if those children come from disadvantaged backgrounds. But research shows that children who attend grammars do not perform any better than they would in a high performing comprehensive school.

PA

Working with research assistant, Ella Jakeway, I analysed some of the issues around areas that fall under the grammar school system - using data from the Department for Education. And the data demonstrates the potentially damaging impact grammar schools can have on a local area.

In many selective local authority areas the gap between rich and poor only gets wider. The worst case is Buckinghamshire, a wholly selective authority, where the progress made across eight subjects by disadvantaged children is on average three quarters of a grade less than that of the more affluent children. This would suggest a selective system is not benefiting all children, and may in fact be harming the prospects of some.

Working the system

When analysing the data, we looked carefully at the characteristics of children attending school in selective authorities, and discovered a phenomenon that appears to challenge the social mobility argument for grammar schools.

We looked at the numbers of disadvantaged children in a given local authority at the end of primary school, and measured how that had changed by the time those children reach the age of 16. We found children crossed borders to neighbouring authorities to a much higher degree than expected. The number of disadvantaged children in Buckinghamshire, for example, drops by more than a third by the end of secondary school even though the total number of children increases. This is because the net movement into selective areas is driven by the middle classes.

The county seems to have a huge influx of middle class secondary aged children coming in, while some disadvantaged pupils attend non-selective schools in neighbouring authorities. By way of contrast, some of the lowest performing local authorities show a significant increase in numbers of deprived children.

A measure of privilege

The latest government statistics show the number of children in selective grammar schools has risen steadily since an all-time low in 1986 (3%) to 5.2% today. And the new £50m cash boost to a handful of schools could increase that number to more than 6%.

But it is by no means clear how the expansion could be limited to the most disadvantaged children nor how this could be maintained over time. The danger is that the extra places will simply encourage more children to travel further to school - the travel time for pupils at grammar schools is already double that of those at non-selective schools.

That said, my own research and that of others suggests the biggest factor that determines a child's outcomes at 16 is not whether they attend a comprehensive or grammar school, but their family's socioeconomic status. And this introduces educational differences even before children begin formal schooling. Ultimately then it would seem that grammar schools risk making what is already an unbalanced and uneven situation simply more unjust and unfair.

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Grammars receive £50m boost, while primary and secondary schools rely on cash donations from parents

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A handful of grammar schools are to receive a £50m boost to expand their pupil numbers. To qualify for the funding, schools had to submit plans on how they would try and increase the number of poorer pupils.

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Marketisation, parentocracy, league tables, Ofsted etc

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When Gary Phillips started his career as a young teacher, the education world was a radically different place. There were no league tables, no Ofsted, no academies or free schools. Parent choice and competition had barely registered on the national consciousness.

All that changed 30 years ago this summer with the introduction of the 1988 Education Reform Act, a huge piece of legislation that introduced the national curriculum and the idea of diversity and a "schools market" in which parents would vote with their feet, in theory encouraging the best schools to expand and the worst to improve or close.

Three decades later, the tools of that market - performance measures and inspection reports - are a fact of life. "Go compare"-style websites ranking local schools are taken for granted. New education providers, in the form of academy trusts, are a reality in most communities.

And Phillips's school, Lilian Baylis Technology School, in Lambeth, south London, would appear to exemplify the benefits of this approach to public services.

When Phillips took over at Lilian Baylis in the late 1990s, the school was in the doldrums. Barely 10% of its pupils achieved five good GCSEs and attendance was chronically low.

Situated in one of the most deprived parts of the country, it was propelled into the national headlines when the former cabinet minister and local parent Oliver Letwin proclaimed at a Tory party conference fringe meeting that he would rather beg on the streets than send his children to the school closest to where he lived.

Today it is outstanding on every count, oversubscribed and achieving impressive results with a diverse intake. The 1988 reforms played an unambiguous role in that improvement, says Phillips: "They shone a spotlight on schools failing young people like this one."

He is more guarded about the overall success of the market experiment: "I would give it six out of 10. More accountability provided a great opportunity for my generation of school leaders to prove ourselves and the national curriculum was right because it reduced inequality, even if it has been undermined by academy freedoms.

"But performance measures (such as the new Progress 8) have now become impenetrable to most parents so may not even be helpful for exercising choice.

"The school you go to still depends on where you live - we see parents swapping council houses to come here. Intake and its social class still influences how some parents make their choices and these subtle forces influence selection."

In the past six months I have been researching a new book, The Best For My Child. Did the schools market deliver?, which looks back at the 30 years since the passage of the 1988 act. The unease Phillips voices about the market reforms came through interviews with many of the key players in recent education reform.

The English schools hierarchy is as powerful as ever, with some choices only available to a select group of parents who can afford hefty fees, move to the catchment of a successful school, or pay for costly private tuition to pass high-stakes entrance exams. Popular schools haven't expanded to accommodate all comers, as pure market advocates predicted, and failing schools have proved hard to close down.

The complex interaction between choice, admissions practices, house price and performance measures has led to segregation typified by schools with radically different profiles from their local communities.

And while many more young people are staying on to higher level qualifications than 30 years ago, and gaps in attainment by social group are starting to narrow, around 11% of 16- 24-year-olds are still not in employment, education or training.

Some parts of the country, recently categorised in 12 new government-designated " opportunity areas ", appear stubbornly resistant to every policy initiative of the past 30 years.

"The idea of applying the market to something that isn't a market has bedevilled this policy from the start," says Phillips. "A market is always going to have winners and losers. You can't close down failing schools until they have completely collapsed their roll. What the sociologists call the 'parentocracy' doesn't really exist in places where there are two rather than 20 local schools."

Meanwhile, there is growing concern about the unintended consequences of high-stakes accountability; " off rolling" pupils less likely to succeed, teaching to the test, manipulation of the curriculum and small but significant number of " orphan schools " that none of the new "edu-providers" want.

Several interviewees described a situation in which the government is attempting to oversee thousands of academies, through a muddle of local authorities, school chains, regional commissioners and the Education Funding Agency, as the "wild west".

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Break time at Lilian Baylis school. Photograph: Jill Mead for the Guardian

Stories of poor financial management, even corrupt practices, in the independent state school sector persist. The antics at the Durand Academy, relieved of its funding agreement by the Department for Education, have been well documented and watched closely by neighbouring schools such as like LIlian Baylis. Last September the Wakefield City academies trust gave up all its schools. Recently the Bright Tribe academy trust has been in the news over transactions with companies linked to the trust's founder.

Phillips, who seriously considered academy conversion for his school but decided to stay within Lambeth local authority, believes the innovative instincts behind the early academies have evaporated in the rush for mass academisation. "The chains have over-expanded and it often becomes more about the preservation of the trust than about the pupils. In that situation, the children of the poor are most likely to suffer."

But perhaps the biggest weakness of the market has been the failure to guarantee enough good teachers - and challenging schools that struggle in performance measures often find it the hardest to recruit good teachers. "We have tripled the number of young people coming out of university with degrees but we haven't increased substantially the number who are prepared to become teachers," says Gary Phillips.

"Young people want the kudos of entering a profession which is valued by their peers. There are too many bad case studies, often academy chains, being passed around and places where people don't want to work."

Parent choice is here to stay, but the current lull in domestic policy could provide an opportunity for reflection on what has worked in the past 30 years and what could change in the future.

Better local oversight of schools and stronger incentives for local collaboration, rather than national chains "cherry picking" little groups of schools, would be Phillips' priorities. My own conclusions for what is needed now include reform of school admissions and a broader definition of what we mean by success, one that goes beyond simple test and exam results.

Thirty years on we may be ready for another all-encompassing Education Reform Act. "But that would require great political leadership now," says Gary Phillips. I agree with that.
The Best For My Child. Did the schools market deliver? by Fiona Millar will be published by John Catt this month Topics

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After 30 years of 'go compare', English education is a wild west | Fiona Millar

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When Gary Phillips started his career as a young teacher, the education world was a radically different place. There were no league tables, no Ofsted, no academies or free schools. Parent choice and competition had barely registered on the national consciousness.

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Model 30 mark answer on marketisation and privatisation 

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Model 30 mark answer on marketisation and privatisation 

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Schools 'silt-shifting' low achieving students

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Schools 'silt-shifting' low achieving students

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Sociology Factsheet

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BBC article

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Sociology Factsheet