By Jake Anders, Lindsey Macmillan, and Gill Wyness

While the uncertainties of a global pandemic make this one of the most volatile periods of education policy in history, if there is one lesson we should all have learned since last March, it is that indecision is costly. This has proven true repeatedly for public health and looks just as relevant for education. As we saw with the exam fiasco of summer 2020, the failure to act decisively led to there being little alternative but to assign students grades based on teachers’ predictions of what they would have achieved. This sub-optimal situation removed any final contribution on the part of the student, and, more importantly, resulted in significant biases across school type and family background. Of course, back in summer 2020, the government had little time for the advance planning that any alternatives (such as ongoing assessment) would have required. But this year, they have no such excuse, and inaction now poses the substantial risk of being left without alternatives again. That is why the government must act now to ensure that we don’t have a repeat performance in summer 2021.

For exams to give all pupils the same chance to succeed, one of the pre-requisites is that they have had the same amount of time to prepare. However, we know that is not the case from looking at patterns in disruption to their studies. While both exam cohorts (year 11 and year 13) missed up to 5 months schooling in the academic year 2019-20, the disruption has continued during this crucial exam year and in much less uniform a manner. Unfortunately, England does not publish data on attendance rates by year group, but we can look more broadly at attendance rates in all state-funded schools by region over the autumn term. The figure below illustrates that while attendance rates started the academic year between 85% and 95%, by mid-November we were seeing rates substantially below this (falling from 88% to 83% on average) driven by widespread – but regionally varying – self-isolation by both individual pupils and education ‘bubbles’. In mid-November, attendance rates were lowest in the North West and Yorkshire. By mid-December, with what we now understand to be the prevalence of the new variant increasing, London, the East, and the South East had all seen stark declines in their attendance rates. In contrast, the South West has remained near the top of attendance rates throughout.

Figure: Weekly attendance in state-funded schools by region, 10^th September 2020 – 10^th December 2020.

Source: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak

 

This disruption seems likely to get worse still. The Christmas holidays were anything but a break for schools and teachers, with an announcement on setting up in-school testing released shortly before the end of term (here) and the long-awaited announcement on returning to school made by DfE on December 30^th. Secondary schools across the country have now moved to remote learning this week. While the majority of primary schools remain open, an increasing proportion (upwards of 15%) will not open their doors to pupils for the foreseeable future, either under direct DfE instruction through the schools contingency framework, or acting unilaterally over fears for teachers’ and students’ health. The DfE currently state that the majority of schools will re-open on January 18^th, but with spiralling infection rates and stretched hospital capacities in every region, this position looks increasingly untenable. We await the Prime Minister’s announcement this evening, but many suspect that all schools will be closed for the foreseeable future.

In a blog post from November (here), we laid out the evidence that points to exams being the best route forward for school pupils in 2021, but advocating important changes (particularly focused on allowing greater flexibility),  given the uncertainty that was already evident at that point. It is becoming increasingly clear that exams, at least in their usual form, cannot go ahead – this makes the changes that we continue to call for vital and urgent. The current exam plans cannot provide the level playing field that it is claimed they will deliver, given the extent of differential learning experiences of those from different regions and backgrounds in this school year alone. So what now?

A levels and GCSEs

The evidence clearly points to avoiding centre or teacher assessed grades where possible. We, therefore, argue that externally set and marked exams remain the fairest option to all pupils taking terminal exams.

But these do not have to take place in the current format proposed, during a three-week period in June 2021. Instead, there is a strong case for more flexible timing for testing pupils, allowing exams to be spread across the summer term and, crucially, allowing pupils to sit these exams at different times to deal with any continuing need for closures during this period. While this will involve more work for exam boards given the need to provide multiple versions of each exam, this is the fairest way to ensure that pupils do not miss out on external assessments. The fact that it requires more work only underlines the need for swift action.

Further, we must ensure that this year’s exams include flexible content. This would help to reduce the unfairness caused by the fact that different schools will have been able to cover different content through interruptions to in-person schooling. These reformed exams would be more like university finals: pupils could be given a wider set of options and be asked to answer a smaller proportion of these, for example, 2 questions from 6 alternatives covering a wide sweep of the curriculum.

This approach would have substantial similarities with that already announced in Wales – also supporting fairness for university applications between applicants from the two countries – and would ensure that pupils can still be awarded grades that they have earned while providing robust information on achievement for universities and future employers. Scotland, on the other hand, has cancelled their exams altogether – with National 5s (the GCSE equivalent) cancelled several months ago, and Highers (the A level equivalent) cancelled just before Christmas. Scotland will instead base awards on teacher judgement, and while this is not an optimal situation, announcing this well in advance gives schools and teachers ample time for ongoing assessment and observation.

Primary school testing

While Key Stage 1 tests have been suspended for 2021, current plans are for Key Stage 2 tests to go ahead, although the school-level results will not be published. Given that these tests are primarily used as indicators of school performance, which is going to be measured with substantial error this year, there are serious questions about their value to bodies such as Ofsted with whom they are still proposed to be shared for accountability purposes. As such, there is a strong case for abandoning these tests altogether given the current circumstances. This would significantly reduce the burden on primary school teachers, who are working under very difficult conditions, and would remove the stress on pupils and parents associated with preparing for these tests under such difficult circumstances.

Action this day

The longer it takes for these steps to be taken, the harder it will be for them to be implemented, until the point where they are no longer feasible. At that point, there is a major risk of a repeat of last year’s fiasco – but without the excuse of not having had time to prepare a better alternative. We’ve seen yet another example today of the decision making process in Whitehall lagging behind that of Holyrood. In the words of the Scottish national anthem, it’s time for the Prime Minister “tae think again.”

By Professor Lindsey Macmillan, Dr. Jake Anders, and Dr. Gill Wyness

In summer 2020, to much controversy, the UK government cancelled both GCSE and A level exams and replaced them with “Centre Assessed Grades” based on teacher predictions. While Scotland has cancelled some exams in 2021, and Wales appear to have arranged for something akin to exams to take place in a classroom setting, the English Government remains adamant that their exams will go ahead as planned. This strategy is not without its problems, but with some important adjustments, it’s still the best and fairest way to assess pupils.

Primary and secondary schools closed their doors in late March 2020 and only fully re-opened 6 months later in September. Schooling has continued to be disrupted for many, when classes or other ‘bubbles’ have to self-isolate due to suspected COVID outbreaks, meaning that learning has to move online. This situation is likely to result in further unequal “learning loss” as a result of inequalities in-home learning environments, including technology to reliably access lessons online.

Recent work by Ofsted reported widespread learning loss as a result of these closures, with younger pupils returning to school having forgotten basic skills, and older children losing reading ability. But the loss is not evenly distributed; Ofsted reported that children with good support structures were doing better than those whose parents were unable to work flexibly. Several analyses (e.g. Andrew et al, 2020; Anders et al, 2020) back this up, reporting that pupils from better-off families spent more time on home learning, and were much more likely to have benefitted from online classes than those from poorer backgrounds. Work by the Sutton Trust found that children in households’ earnings more than £60,000 per year were twice as likely to be receiving tutoring during school closures compared to those earnings less than £30,000. While steps have been put in place to help pupils catch up, such as the pupil catch-up premium and the National Tutoring Programme, pupils this year will almost certainly be at a disadvantage compared to previous cohorts when they face this year’s exams, and the severity of disadvantage is likely to vary by family background.

While this might be evidence enough that exams should be cancelled this year, it is worth first considering that the alternatives:

1. Continuous teacher assessment

Perhaps the most obvious alternative to exams is continuous teacher assessment, through the use of coursework, in-class testing and so on. This would negate the need for exams and would mean all students would receive a grade in the event that exams have to be cancelled due to a resurgence in the pandemic. Scotland has already committed to using teacher assessment instead of exams for their National 5s (equivalent to GCSEs) this year. While this does seem like a safe choice to replace exams, research has shown that teacher assessment can contain biases. For example, Burgess and Greaves (2013) compared teacher assessment versus exam performance at Key Stage 2, finding evidence of black and minority students being under-assessed by teachers, versus white students. Campbell (2015) similarly shows that teacher’s ratings of pupils’ reading and maths attainment at age 7 varies according to income, gender, Special Education Need, and ethnicity.

Using coursework to assess pupils (whether internally or externally marked and/or moderated) also risks interference from parents and schoolteachers, so that a pupil’s eventual grade could be more a reflection of the support they’ve received rather than their own achievements. And levels of support are likely to vary by SES, again putting those from poorer backgrounds at a disadvantage.

2. Teachers’ predictions

But sticking with exams is not without its risks. It is, after all, a pandemic, and the government could be forced to cancel exams at the last minute. If they leave it too late to implement continuous teacher assessment or an alternative form of external assessment then they will have to turn to more reactive measures – such as asking teachers to predict pupils’ grades (the method finally adopted for the 2020 GCSE and A level cohorts). This would at least have the advantage of being consistent with last year, but, again would likely result in biased measures of achievement. Predicted grades have been shown to be inaccurate, with the vast majority overpredicted (causing headaches for university admissions). However, work by Anders et al. (2020) and Murphy and Wyness (2020) showed that among high achieving pupils, those from low SES backgrounds and state schools are harder to predict and end up with lower predictions than their more advantaged counterparts.

3. A school leaving certificate?

There are more radical possibilities to consider. One is for schools to abandon assessment this year altogether, and to simply issue students with school leaving certificates, similar to that received in America for graduating high school. This would certainly level the playing field among school leavers. But it could lead to some big problems for what comes next. For example, without A level grades, how would universities decide which applicants to accept?  Under this scenario, admissions tutors would become increasingly reliant on ‘soft metrics’ such as personal statements, teacher references and interviews. This may also lead to the more widespread use of university entry tests, which are already in place at some institutions.  All of this is likely to be bad news for social mobility since the use of “soft metrics” has been shown to induce bias (Wyness, 2017; Jones, 2016) while there is very little evidence about the equity implications of using aptitude tests, except in highly specific settings (Anders, 2014) so the potential for unintended consequences is substantial.

But in theory, universities shouldn’t need to use entry tests – these pupils already have grades in national tests – their GCSEs. For this university entry cohort, they were sat before the pandemic, and are high-stakes, externally marked assessments. Indeed, Kirkup et al. (2010) find no evidence that the SAT (the most widely used aptitude test in the US) provides any additional evidence on performance once at university than using GCSE results on their own. Many universities already use GCSE grades as part of their admissions decision along with predicted A level grades. Yet these grades were measured two years ago now – and so will obviously miss any changes in performance since then. Indeed, recent work by Anders et al. (2020) suggests that GCSE performance is a poor predictor of where students are at, in terms of achievement, at the end of their A levels. Using administrative data and machine learning techniques, they predict A level performance using GCSEs, finding that only 1 in 3 pupils could be accurately predicted, and that certain groups of students (those from state schools and low SES backgrounds) appeared to be “underpredicted” by their GCSEs, going on to outperform at A level.

An alternative approach to exams?

The alternatives to exams raise many concerns, particularly for those from poor backgrounds. A better solution may be to design A level exams to take account of the learning loss and missed curricula experienced by pupils, and the fact that some pupils will have experienced this to different degrees. Ofqual was dismissive of this suggestion in their report on examinations for 2020/21, pointing to burden on exam boards among other factors, but while we take seriously the considerations they highlight, we think this underestimates the challenges of the status quo.

For all the headlines about Wales “cancelling” exams, from a first look, it appears that this is rather a simplistic summary. They are still planning to hold some kind of examination, which will be both externally set and externally marked, but when these will take place is now more flexible, and they will happen in class rather than in exam halls – ironically, removing the in-built social distancing normally associated with examinations. This kind of flexibility is needed in these difficult circumstances.

An alternative that has also been discussed in England is that exams could be redesigned so that the majority of questions are optional. In this way, they would look more like university finals, in which students are typically given a set of questions, and need only answer a subset of their choice – e.g. answer 2/7 questions. This would take account of the fact that pupils may have covered different aspects of the curricula but not all of it, since they need only answer the questions they are prepared for. While appreciating there are challenges with this approach, a carefully designed exam would at least provide pupils with a grade they have earned and would provide universities and employers with the information needed to assess applicants.

Universities should also be aware that students from different backgrounds will have experienced lockdown in very different ways, and those lacking school and parental support may still struggle to do well, even in well-modified exams. This could and should be tackled with the increased use of contextual admissions. Universities often cite fears that students from contextual backgrounds are more likely to arrive underprepared for university and risk failing their courses. But this year, lack of preparation for university may well be the norm, forcing universities to provide extra tuition and other assistance to help students get “up to speed”. There has never been more need, and more opportunity, for widespread contextual admissions.

By Dr. Samuel Sims 

*This article originally appeared in Schools Week*

This week sees the climax of two elite competitive events: the French Open and the 11 Plus.

On Sunday, Nadal confirmed his status as the ‘King of Clay’ by winning a record thirteenth French Open. There was no aspect of the game in which he did not excel. His topspin made the ball bounce up rapidly off the clay. His nimble footwork allowed him to cover the long courts at Roland Garros. And his persistence paid dividends during the longer rallies. Nadal is the complete clay court player.

In the 11 Plus, which thousands of pupils sit today, primary school children compete for entry to selective grammar schools. They will slug it out over three sets of questions: English; maths; and ‘reasoning’. The test is designed to objectively determine those with the highest academic potential.

As with the tennis, the prizes on offer in the 11 Plus have changed over the years. Between the wars, examinations at age 11 were used to ration access to free secondary school places. When secondary education was extended to all in 1944, the test was used instead to allocate pupils to more academic (grammar) or less academic (‘modern’) secondary schools.

Likewise, the rules of the 11 Plus game have changed over time. Prior to 1944, headmasters would often decide who to admit based on wide-ranging interviews with pupils, which might cover history, science, or any other range of subjects.

Unsurprisingly, concerns emerged that pupils whose parents couldn’t answer such questions would themselves be disadvantaged. Others worried that the test incentivised “cramming.” In 1938 the Spens report, which laid the foundations for the post-war grammar school system, concluded that modern intelligence testing would be fairer, and should be used instead. Some local education authorities followed their recommendations.

In the decades following the war, the extent of middle class dominance in grammar schools became all too clear. To make matters worse, private tutors began offering preparation for the tests. Repeated attempts were made to ‘class proof’ the 11 Plus by removing any assessment of knowledge. Hence the emphasis on maths, comprehension, and abstract ‘verbal and non-verbal reasoning’ in today’s exam.

No sooner than the shift to intelligence testing began, however, its limitation started to become apparent. As early as 1947, the educationalist Brian Simon noticed the weak correlation between IQ and academic achievement among his own pupils.[1] In the same way that Nadal’s dominance results from a combination of skills and temperament, intelligence seemed to only be one part of what makes for the complete student.

Recently, the psychologist Sophie Von Stumm has identified the other elements. Synthesising data from eleven different studies, she found that the recipe for the ideal student is approximately two parts intelligence (IQ), to one part intellectual curiosity, and one part scholarly diligence.[2] In short, intelligence is only half the story.

This insight was not lost on pre-war Heads. John Paton, High Master of Manchester Grammar School in 1920, defended his admission interviews against accusations of social bias on the grounds that the conversations told him about a pupil’s hunger for knowledge, and ability to apply themselves academically.[3] Paton was also looking for Von Stumm’s other two ingredients of academic potential.

So where does this leave the 11 Plus? At one extreme, we could design it to be a pure intelligence test. This would prevent pupils from highly-educated families gaining an advantage from the knowledge they pick up by osmosis at the dinner table, or the coaching they receive from private tutors.

But this would be a highly incomplete measure of academic potential. It would be like running a version of the French Open in which the players were only allowed to play forehand shots. The tournament would obviously fail to establish the best tennis player. Nadal might struggle to make the quarter finals.

Alternatively, we could include tests of students’ knowledge in a wider range of areas. This would no doubt better reflect their wider reading and studiousness up to that point. But history tells us that this would be socially unfair – like running the French Open with the less wealthy player forced to tie one hand behind their back.

The 11 Plus can either be an accurate measure of academic potential that is unfair. Or a socially fair test that is inaccurate. But it cannot be both. After a century of failed attempts to perfect the formula, perhaps it is time the 11 Plus retired from the game.

[1] Thom, D. (2004). Politics and the people: Brian Simon and the campaign against intelligence tests in British schools. History of Education, 33(5), 515-529.

[2] Von Stumm, S., Hell, B., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2011). The hungry mind: Intellectual curiosity is the third pillar of academic performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6), 574-588.

[3] Sutherland, G. (1840). Measuring Intelligence: English Local Education Authorities and Mental Testing, 1919–1939. Biology, Medicine and Society, 1940, 315.

By Dr. Gill Wyness

Whose grades are being predicted?

Predicted grades are a common feature of the English education system, with teachers’ predictions of pupils’ A level performance forming the basis of university applications each year.

What’s different this year?

The Covid-19 pandemic has put these predictions under the spotlight. The cancellation of exams means that all year 11 and year 13 pupils will instead receive ‘calculated grades’ based on teacher predictions.

How well do teachers predict grades?

Teachers’ predicted grades have been shown to be inaccurate but the majority of inaccurate grades are over-predicted – in other words, too high.

• There is limited research on the impact of predicted grades, though studies of prediction accuracy by individual grade (e.g. how many A’s were predicted to be A’s) by Delap (1994) and Everett and Papageourgiou (2011) showed around half of all predictions were accurate, while 42-44% were over-predicted by at least one grade, and only 7-11% of all predicted grades were under-predicted.
• Studies of prediction accuracy according to a student’s best three A levels show even higher rates of inaccuracy (unsurprisingly, since it is harder to predict all three A levels correctly). For example, Wyness and Murphy find that only 16% of students received accurate predictions for all three, with 75% overpredicted and just 8% underpredicted.

Who loses out?

Lower achieving students tend to be overpredicted; higher achieving students tend to be more accurately predicted.

• All studies find that higher grades are more accurately predicted than lower grades. This is likely an artefact of the combination of teachers’ tendency to overpredict coupled with ceiling effects. Overprediction is impossible for the top grades so accuracy is the consequence.
• Thus, AAA students are likely to be accurately predicted (or underpredicted) whereas CCC students are more likely to be overpredicted.
• It is therefore essential to take into account the achievement level of the student when analysing prediction accuracy by student characteristics. For example, low SES students tend to be lower-achieving, on average. Therefore, low SES students tend to be overpredicted on average, while high SES students tend to be more accurately predicted (this is shown by Wyness and Murphy).

So are teachers biased?

There is little evidence of bias in prediction accuracy according to student characteristics.

• The majority of the studies above show no compelling evidence of bias in teacher prediction by student characteristics, once achievement is taken into account.
• Though Wyness and Murphy show that among high achievers, state school students receive slightly less generous predictions than those in independent schools and that those from low SES backgrounds receive slightly less generous grades than those from high SES backgrounds
• This was not a causal finding, and other factors could be driving this apparent bias.

What’s going wrong, then?

Predicting student grades is a near-impossible task for teachers

• Work by Anders et al (2020) highlighted the difficulty of predicting grades accuracy. In this study, the authors attempted to predict A level grades using detailed administrative data on student prior achievement (GCSE) and both statistical and machine learning techniques. Their models could correctly predict 1 in 4 pupils across their best three A levels, versus 1 in 5 for teacher predictions (based on Murphy and Wyness, 2020).
• Their predictions were incorrect for 74% of pupils.

That’s not great. What else do we know?

Certain pupil types appear harder to predict than others

• Anders et al also found that high achieving pupils in comprehensive schools were more likely to be underpredicted by their models, compared to their grammar and private school counterparts. This highlights the difficult task that teachers face each year, particularly for pupils with more variable trajectories from GCSE to A level.

Can’t we remove the teacher and calculate grades based on past performance?

The ‘calculated grades’ for 2020 are not just based on teacher predictions.

• Schools have provided predicted grades and pupil rankings (which are known to be easier to produce than predicted grades).
• These predicted grades may also be more accurate than in previous years, since teachers were given better guidelines on how to predict, and what information to use
• Ofqual will standardise teachers’ predicted grades according to the centre’s historical performance. this will reduce the tendency towards overprediction that all studies of predicted grades have observed. For example, if a school historically awards 60% of Bs on average, they will be expected to do so this year, and grades will be downgraded to reflect this.
• But teachers’ rankings will be preserved so that pupils cannot “change places” after the standardisation.

Scotland have promised to re-think standardising results based on the school. What will happen in England?

• It’s a controversial point. Our paper shows that high-achieving comprehensive school pupils are more likely to be under-predicted compared to their grammar and private school counterparts.
• Among high achievers, where under-prediction is most common, the team found 23% of comprehensive school pupils were underpredicted by two or more grades compared to just 11% of grammar and private school pupils.”

What if a student who does less well earlier goes on to study really hard? Isn’t this unfair?

“Outlier” students and disadvantaged students could potentially be disproportionately affected by the standardization process

• The standardization process could affect outlier pupils more than others
• For example, an AAA student at a historically low performing school could be downgraded as a result of standardization
• And a DDD student at a high performing school could be upgraded
• This could serve to entrench existing socio-economic gaps in pupil attainment to the extent that low SES students are more likely to attend historically low performing schools, and high SES students are more likely to attend high performing schools

So what should we do about it?

The cancellation of exams this year has highlighted that the system of using predicted grades as a key part of the university application process urgently needs reform.

• the research above highlights that predicting student grades, even removing teachers from the equation, and instead using detailed data on pupils’ past achievement is a near-impossible task.
• A better solution would be to reform the university applications system and allow students to apply to university after they have sat their exams

References

Gill, T., & Benton, T. (2015). The accuracy of forecast grades for OCR A levels in June 2014. Statistics Report Series No. 90. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Assessment.

Delap, M. R. (1994). An investigation into the accuracy of A‐level predicted grades. Educational Research, 36(2), 135-148.

Everett & Papageorgiou (2011), “Investigating the Accuracy of Predicted A Level Grades as part of 2009 UCAS Admission Process”, BIS Research Paper No 37, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, London.

Murphy, R., & Wyness, G. (2020). “Minority Report: the impact of predicted grades on university admissions of disadvantaged groups”. Education Economics, 1-18.

UCAS (2015). “Factors associated with predicted and achieved A level attainment”, University and College Admissions Service, Gloucestershire

New research shows the impact that drive and ambition can have

By Professor John Jerrim 

Much has been written recently about learning loss and the COVID-19 crisis. With the country locked down and schools shut, some children are bound to have learned less over this period than others.

It has been noted that learning loss is likely to particularly affect the life chances of young people with high-stakes examinations next year, such as those entering Year 11 in the autumn.

All other things being equal, those who are motivated, driven to succeed and ambitious are likely to have continued to work hard in their studies even while their school was closed. On the other hand, those pupils who are less motivated and have no clear post-school targets or plans, may well have taken their foot off the pedal.

But how much does being driven and ambitious during Year 11 really matter for GCSE outcomes, even in normal times?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

Unique data

New research of mine (along with my colleagues Nikki Shure and Gill Wyness), published today, looks at a nationally representative cohort of Year 11s who took their GCSEs in 2016, and considers their ‘drive’ (e.g. how they responded to questions such as ‘I want top grades in most or all of my courses’ and ‘I want to be the best, whatever I do’) and their ambition (measured by whether they want to go to university and, if so, which one they want to attend). They answered these questions in November/December of Year 11 – around six months before taking their GCSEs.

From this, we can compare GCSE outcomes for Year 11 pupils who score highest on these measures (e.g. who say they want to be the best at what they do and plan to apply to an Oxbridge university) to their school peers who lack any such motivation. Importantly, we can also account for a wide array of background differences between such teenagers, such as their levels of prior achievement, socio-economic background and the school that they attend.

The results show that drive and ambition really do matter during Year 11. Ambitious and driven young people achieve – on average – around half a grade higher per subject in their GCSEs than comparable Year 11s, with the same level of prior achievement, who are not determined to succeed.

Implications

What does this finding imply?

First, even during ‘normal’ times, motivation and determination in Year 11 matters a lot. Clearly, there is only so much that schools, teachers and parents can do. At the end of the day, the buck stops with young people themselves.

Second, in the current climate, this provides one clear reason why educational inequalities in GCSE grades may widen next year. During this last term – with schools not open to most children – the onus has been placed upon young people to continue putting in the hours on their school work. The driven and the ambitious pupils will have done this. Those lacking motivation and direction will not have.

It would therefore be no surprise at all if the gap in GCSE outcomes between such teenagers increases dramatically next academic year.

You can read the full research here.

1. There are large inequalities in the home learning environment

Families from lower socio-economic backgrounds may experience challenges in supporting their child’s home learning. For example through:

• Limited access to resources(including tech devices);
• Lack of reliable and fast Internet connection;
• Low levels of parental numeracy and literacy;
• Anxieties towards learning (especially maths).

Current evidence suggests it is important to focus on the quality of children’s home learning, rather than simply the quantity. 

2. Parental inputs affect early child development

By the time children start school, socio-economic gaps are evident in child skills. Exploring the role of various parental inputs, we find that financial resources are an important channel, explaining up to 59% of the effect on child cognitive skills. Parental investments of health behaviours during pregnancy and monetary investments at home explain a further 14% of the test score gaps.

3. Jobless parents invest less money but more time in their children’s learning

Parents out of work, but with otherwise similar backgrounds to working parents, provide lower monetary investments but more time investments in their children’s learning, such as helping with homework. These findings could help guide future social policy aimed at equalising opportunities for children living in workless households.

4. There are large inequalities in the courses that university students attend, by family background.

We examine inequalities in the match between student quality and university quality. We find that students from lower socio-economic groups systematically undermatch, that secondary schools play a key role in generating these gaps, and that while there are negligible gender gaps in the academic match, high-attaining women systematically undermatch in terms of expected earnings, largely driven by subject choice.

5. There is a great deal of inaccuracy in predicted grades.

Only 16% of applicants’ to the UK University system have predicted grades that are accurate. While 75% of applicants have their grades over-predicted, high-attaining, disadvantaged students are significantly more likely to receive under-predictions. Those under-predicted candidates are more likely to enrol in courses for which they are overqualified than their peers. The use of predicted rather than actual grades has important implications for student’s labour market outcomes and social mobility in general.

6. Non-monetary incentives can improve teacher retention.

The French have a non-pecuniary (non-money based), “career-path oriented” centralized incentive scheme designed to attract and retain teachers in French disadvantaged schools. We find this incentive scheme has a statistically significant positive effect on the number of consecutive years teachers stay in disadvantaged schools and decreases the probability of inexperienced teachers in disadvantaged schools to leave the profession.

7. Teacher’s working hours have remained stable despite initiatives to reduce them

Surveys have revealed that teachers in England work far longer hours than their international counterparts. However, contrary to current narratives, we do not find evidence that average working hours have increased. Indeed, we find no notable change in total hours, work during evenings and weekends over the fifteen to twenty years. The results suggest that policy initiatives have so far failed to reduce teachers’ working hours and that more radical action may need to be taken in order to fix this problem. The article concludes with a discussion of how official data on working hours could be improved.

8. There are large inequalities in who accesses grammar schools

Inequalities exist in who attains places at grammar schools by socio-economic status, with more disadvantaged children far less likely to attend a grammar school than their more advantaged peers. This is true even when comparing those with similar levels of academic achievement. 

9. Private school choices are based on values, not just money

Given the high and rising fees required to send a child to private school, one might think that the decision is entirely connected with financial resources. However, while these remain an important factor, we argue that other determinants are also important. In particular, we highlight the importance of parental values and geographical proximity to choosing high-quality state school alternatives. 

10. Bullying casts a long shadow on attainment

Both type of bullying and its intensity matters for long-run outcomes such as obtaining a degree, income, and mental health. We can assess the effects of bullying victimisation on short- and long-term outcomes, including educational achievements, earnings, and mental ill-health at age 25 years.

By: Dr. Jake Anders, Professor Lindsey Macmillan, Professor Patrick Sturgis and Dr. Gill Wyness

The past few weeks have been challenging for parents across the country working hard to support their children to continue to learn during the COVID–19 lockdown. One of the reasons for the big push to get kids back to school is the concern over inequalities driven by differences in home learning. Using new data from a high-quality random sample collected using the Kantar Public Voice Survey, we examine the extent of inequalities in home schooling during lockdown from the end of April to the beginning of June. We find stark differences in the time spent home schooling but also in the perceptions of parents, in terms of their ability to adequately support their children’s learning, and in how the burden of home schooling is divided between mothers and fathers.

Differences in days spent home schooling

While very similar proportions (around 75%) of graduate and non-graduate parents report doing any home schooling, graduate parents report home schooling their children on more days compared to non-graduate parents. While almost 80% of graduate parents are home schooling their children at least 4 days a week, only 60% of non-graduates are home schooling this often. This is consistent with other surveys covering the same period that have found inequalities in the amount of time spent home schooling by parental income.

Differences in perception of ability to home school

These differences in time spent home schooling could be driven, in part, by graduate parents having greater confidence in their abilities to home school their children. In our survey, graduates were more likely (70%) to agree with the statement ‘I am confident in my household’s abilities to home school my child’ compared to non-graduates (60%). Similarly, graduate parents report more confidence that their child’s learning is continuing. This confidence gap in ability to home school is concerning, as studies show that children who have parents with anxiety about maths tend to perform worse in maths.

Differences in perceptions of interfering with their job

These differences in time spent home schooling seem to have a consequential effect on whether parents’ feel able to do their jobs. Graduates are substantially more likely to agree that home schooling is interfering with their job, a difference this is particularly pronounced for mothers, with nearly 80% of graduate mothers agreeing that home schooling had interfered with their ability to do their job, compared to 67% of graduate fathers, and 50% of non-graduates.

 

Differences in perception of who is doing the most home schooling

This inequality between mothers and fathers can also be seen when we consider who is doing the most to support their child with schoolwork during lockdown. Around half (49%) of fathers say that their partner does most of the home schooling, with the other half split between those who say that they take on the lion’s share (16%), and those reporting that this responsibility is split equally (33%). This contrasts with mothers, with almost two-thirds (63%) saying they devote most time on this task, with only one fifth (21%) reporting an equal split, and just 13% saying that their partners are doing the majority of home-schooling. These patterns are, again, particularly pronounced for graduate mothers. Similar differences in perceptions between mothers and fathers have also been found in the US, where 45% of fathers said they did most of the home schooling – but just 3% of mothers reported that their partner was making the largest contribution.

Support for children and working mothers

Taken together this new evidence from a high-quality random sample of parents suggests that inequalities arising from home schooling during lockdown will exacerbate existing inequalities in education. We know that children of graduate parents already have higher levels of cognitive and socio-emotional skills on school entry. These inequalities are only likely to widen if children from less advantaged backgrounds are spending less time on home-schooling during lockdown. Non-graduate parents are also less confident in their ability to home school their children and this may be detrimental to the quality of the support they are able to provide.

Our survey also reveals gender disparities in the impact of home schooling, with graduate mothers particularly likely to report that home schooling is interfering with their jobs. But parents perceptions do not align on who is sharing the greater burden; while half of fathers say they are doing at least an equal share, a clear majority of mothers think that this level of paternal input is exaggerated.

Catch up strategies when schools re-open should be mindful that returning children will have been exposed to different levels of home schooling. Similarly, employers should be mindful that the burden of home schooling during lockdown is more likely to have affected mothers compared to other employees, and factor this into future pay reviews and promotions.

Dr. Jake Anders is Associate Professor of Educational and Social Statistics and Deputy Director of the Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO), UCL

Professor Lindsey Macmillan is a Professor of Economics and Director of CEPEO, UCL

Professor Patrick Sturgis is a Professor of Quantitative Social Science at the LSE Department of Methodology

Dr. Gill Wyness is Associate Professor of Economics and Deputy Director of CEPEO, UCL

 

By Professor Anna Mountford-Zimdars, Academic Director of the Centre for Social Mobility, University of Exeter

School closures have led to widely discussed concerns regarding the safety, well-being and attainment and progression of students already considered disadvantaged or at risk. Unfortunately, our newly published paper exploring the impact of lockdown reveals widespread cancellation of widening participation (WP) activities such as face-to-face sessions in schools, residential summer schools and university taster days that are designed to help these pupils progress into Higher Education.

Encouragingly, ingenuity has been many practitioners watchword and new modes of delivery are springing up that could preserve some activity in the face of adversity and even create new ways of reaching potential students: after initial cancellations, universities are offering alternative virtual offer-holder or taster days as well as support materials and webinars for students, teachers and parents

No underestimating the upheaval

As part of this OfS funded study, The Centre for Social Mobility at The University of Exeter worked with think-tank The Centre for Education and Youth to survey WP and Uni Connect practitioners. Uni Connect, formerly known as the National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP) consists of 29 partnerships between universities, colleges and local partners working with over 180,000 young people and 1,613 schools to support decisions around and progress into higher education. The aim was to highlight issues and concerns while developing policy and practice recommendations to ensure universities doors do not close to traditionally underrepresented groups.

Our findings show that school closures have impacted negatively on all but a handful of respondents work. The most common implication has been postponement or cancellation of planned activities and alarmingly, one Uni Connect partnership said 182 events had been cancelled so far.

Where events have been postponed, practitioners were in no doubt about the knock on effects that were likely to follow. These will not be short-lived. One Uni Connect practitioner said much of the work they have spent the last four months planning is now postponed and finding new dates and re-booking events will detract from the work that would normally start in September.

From adversity springs innovation

Encouragingly, respondents also identified new approaches that they were planning for, or had already pursued. Several were optimistic that developments introduced due to For example, one WP Officer commented that the current situation has opened new channels for communications with schools, and that telephone conversations have taken on a more personal touch.

Increasing the use of online materials and a shifting to online delivery of events were at the forefront of new developments but respondents also described online mentoring, virtual residentials and tailored support via email.

We found that:

• Seven out of ten respondents in university WP and related roles said that open days would be offered online.
• Over six out ten said their universities were offering online events similar to teaching, alongside static online resources.
• Online forums or Q&A with current undergraduates featured for 58% of university respondents overall, and just under half (49%) were offering online events for teachers and advisors.
• Respondents in Russell Group institutions were more likely than those in other types of institutions to offer static online resources.
• More respondents in the post-92 and other categories of institutions were offering bespoke higher education transition support compared to those in Russell Group institutions.
• Around two-fifths in post-92 institutions (39%) and a quarter in other types of institutions (24%) were offering online events for parents, compared to 14% of respondents in Russell Group institutions.
• Virtual residentials featured more highly for respondents in Russell Group institutions (44%) compared to only 17% of respondents in other institutions.
• Respondents in the other category of universities were most likely to say they were reviewing or creating contextual admissions policies (41%), well above twice the share of respondents in the Post-92 and Russell Group institutions.

*Caution low base

Backing the bounce-back

None of this is easy and it would be optimistic to think these responses will be enough to overcome the considerable hurdles in the way of efforts to ensure all young people have fair and equitable access to HE. It is clear that it cannot be left to individual universities to patch up the gaps in provision. Respondents therefore called for national-level support and leadership to help them ensure young people bounce back from the pandemic.

I would like to see an offer of a national programme of online activities/events/webinars that students and parents can access during this time which can help to prepare for the next step.

Clear and concise messaging to pass to schools and students about HE progression and the UCAS process this summer.

The cancelling of A levels and the proposed use of constructed grades is causing a lot of concern and also raising questions about how they and other measures can be used for selection while still being fair and encouraging widening participation.

Quantitative data from our survey also showed that there was a particular desire to focus on well-being and to provide support for young people falling behind.

Rising to the challenge

A generation will feel the effects of this school and university closures if WP activity is allowed to stumble in the face of the pandemic. A combination of sector-led ingenuity and national action is therefore needed to mitigate current circumstances. The online world offers many opportunities for overcoming some barriers disadvantaged students are likely to face in accessing outreach activities. These include challenges around transport, timing and the time involved in participating in face-to-face events. If connectivity to the internet and access to physical resources such as laptops and smartphones and quiet places to study were equal, the online provision would go a very long way to equalizing access to information, advice and guidance. The involuntary massive online move may thus act as a positive catalyst for enhancing outreach practices long-term.

We are encouraged by the fact that our research suggests Widening Participation practitioners are taking the first steps, and in doing so, learning lessons and developing new approaches that could inform future practice. It is now time to ensure this practice is replicated across the sector, and that national action backs up on-the-ground innovation.

Prof Anna Mountford-Zimdars*, Joanne Moore*, Dr Sam Baars**, Loic Menzies**

*University of Exeter, **The Centre for Education and Youth 

Notes

For a longer report on the survey of admissions and outreach staff, please see

Mountford-Zimdars, A and Moore, J (2020) Safety, food and well-being are a greater concern than attainment: The views from university widening participation staff in the context of Covid-19, Centre for Social Mobility, University of Exeter, Working Paper.

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/aboutusresponsive/wideningparticipation/CV-19_Implications_Widening_Partricipation_practitioners_14.05.2020.pdf

The research had ethical approval and started five days into the school closure, the survey was available from 25^th March to 20^th April and received 262 responses.

Some data collection was supported by an OfS commissioned project/contract. For further information on the University of Exeter and Centre for Education and Youth on the impacts of School Closure survey please see: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/socialmobility/projects/

The project team for this work are from the University of Exeter unless otherwise indicated: Anna Mountford-Zimdars, Joanne Moore, Sam Baars (Centre for Education and Youth) Nicola Sinclair, Kevin Denny (University College Dublin), Annabel Watson, Will Shield, Katherin Barg, Nick Long, Luke Graham, Paul Woolnough, Sara Venner, Taro Fujita, Julie Mason, Verity Hunt, ZhiMin Xiao, Dongbo Zhang, Neil French, Judith Kleine Staarman, Alison Black, Emily Warwick, Brahm Norwich. We would like to thank our critical friends for feedback on the surveys: Ciaran Burke (University of the West of England), and Steven Jones (University of Manchester).

By Professor Simon Burgess, University of Bristol and Professor Anna Vignoles, University of Cambridge

This article was originally commissioned and published by the Campaign for Social Science as part of its Covid-19 programme https://campaignforsocialscience.org.uk/hub-of-hubs-social-sciences-responding-to-covid-19/.

Younger generations will pay a heavy price for our response to this virus. First, their educational opportunities and attainment are being affected by lockdown, variable home-learning facilities, and changing assessment methods. Second, leaving school in a recession is always harder, and the coming recession is likely to be worse than for many years. Whilst the health impact of COVID on older people is more severe, young people are vulnerable educationally and in their long-term employment prospects. The crisis will lay bare the already stark inter- and intra-generational inequalities in educational attainment that are a feature of the UK.

Learning loss from school closures

The decision to impose a school lockdown has been taken in most (but not all) countries and is the result of weighing the health risks to pupils (and their families) and teachers against the loss of skills and growing inequalities. With schools shut, the plan was for learning to take place remotely. But the amount of time children are spending on school-work varies enormously both by school and by parents’ ability to support remote schooling. Recent work from the UK[1], Ireland[2] and the Netherlands[3] all illustrate the factors behind growing educational inequality.

It is difficult to quantify the extent of the likely attainment loss. Extrapolation from studies that have looked at differences in the number of hours of instruction a pupil receives in different countries may guide us. Lavy[4] found an additional hour of instructional time in a subject per week over the school year was associated with a gain in test scores of 6% of a standard deviation. Carrlson[5] also estimate the impact of more days to prepare for a test. This is relevant to the current crisis as most pupils are not receiving the same hours of schooling remotely that they did face to face, irrespective of the quality. If students lose 3-4 hours of each main subject per week for a term, this would equate to about an hour over the academic year, i.e. 6% of a standard deviation[6]. The actual loss of learning will vary by context, depending on what schools and families have been able to provide. We also know that the earlier years of a child’s life are pivotal for their development, and investment during this time is particularly valuable, in terms of improving their cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Hence the negative impact from a lack of face to face school provision is likely to be particularly large for younger children.

Learning loss will be worse for socio-economically disadvantaged students.  Household income and family environment are major determinants of children’s academic achievement in normal circumstances. Socio-economically advantaged parents also tend to compensate for any deterioration in schooling to a greater extent. A recent Sutton Trust survey[7] suggests that during this crisis 44% of middle-class parents are spending more than 4 hours a day on homeschooling. One-third of working-class parents are doing so.  Andrew et al reported similar findings: children in the richest quintile of families spend over 75 minutes per day more on schoolwork than children in the poorest quintile of households. This quickly accumulates: over the (at least) 34 days that schools will be closed, this difference adds up to more than 7 full school days. For some year groups, particularly those nearing end of schooling, this might have a major impact on their attainment.

Post compulsory education

Even in normal times, the 50% of students who do not go on to university are less likely to find a good job and more likely to have lower wages. Of course, this crisis has taught us that many of those low wage jobs are also hugely socially valuable. So policymakers should not measure success by what people earn in the labour market. That said, the group who leave school with very low-level qualifications will find it particularly difficult in this tumultuous labour market.

The labour market prospects of students will vary hugely depending on what qualifications they get. It is perhaps striking that the vocational qualifications with the greatest firm involvement, such as apprenticeships, are some of the most economically valuable. Given the financial hit to firms, and the fact that many have had to suspend their apprenticeships, this is a route that will be badly affected by the COVID crisis. It is imperative that we support firms to restart their training. Unfortunately, training in the UK is pro-cyclical: firms train less in bad times. So policy intervention will be essential.

For students who would normally be university-bound, there are still problems. The fear is that, despite the poor labour market which should encourage students to remain in education, there will be a sharp decline in students going on to HE in 2020/21 due to safety fears or unwillingness to undertake remote learning. However, the main concern is that students from poor backgrounds may miss out. First, they’re A level grades may be negatively affected because COVID has meant that teacher judgement will play a major part in the grade they are awarded, and there is evidence that teachers under-estimate grades of poor students[8]. Even if universities are willing to accept students with somewhat lower grades (given spare places due to the decline in international student numbers), being awarded a low grade may affect the motivation of such students to progress. But the bigger issue is that poorer students are more likely to fund their studies with paid work. Many work in the sectors that are being hardest hit.

More positively, with empty places at universities, this is an opportunity for students from lower-income backgrounds not only to go to university but also to attend a higher-ranked institution than they might otherwise have done. This could be an opportunity to widen participation,

Policy options

So what can policy do? Interventions are needed to support socio-economically disadvantaged pupils and those who have fallen behind academically.  The decision on when schools should return is both complex and emotionally charged. As well as the obvious health risks, each additional month of sub-optimal learning is likely to widen the socio-economic gap in achievement, over and above any loss for the whole cohort.

Younger years should be prioritised, given the importance of the earlier years. Additional support on return to school will be required to address learning loss. Small-group tuition has been found to be effective, but it is expensive, and the pupil premium paid to schools to support disadvantaged children would have to be supplemented. We also need to be mindful that a far greater number of students will now be in families with economic difficulties.

The FE and HE sectors need to communicate strongly that they are open next year and undertake outreach to encourage disadvantaged students to continue their studies. The government needs to work with firms to find ways to continue apprenticeships or to move them in the case of firm failure. We need to invest in the post-compulsory schooling of these vulnerable cohorts, targeting the most disadvantaged students. We know that the long-run negative scarring effect from leaving education during a recession is significant, and we should encourage students to shelter from the worst of it in education and acquire useful and productive skills as they do so.

These policy solutions imply increased spending in an era when government finances are going to be tested. Despite this, investing in the human capital of the young should be central to any economic recovery plan. However, the socio-economic gap in educational achievement was large and persistent before COVID, despite attempts to reduce it. This is because drivers of the disparity in achievement have worsened, e.g. child poverty. COVID has brutally revealed the health inequalities in our society, so too it illustrates the educational ones that have arisen for similar reasons. Perhaps this unprecedented crisis is a time to rethink how we go about reducing deeper economic inequalities that underpin these problems.

[1] Montacute, R. (2020) “Social Mobility and COVID-19”. Sutton Trust Report https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVID-19-and-Social-Mobility-1.pdf

Andrew, A., Cattan, S., Costa Dias, M., Farquharson, C., Kraftman, L., Krutikova, S., Phimister, A. and Sevilla, A.  (2020) ‘Learning during the lockdown: real-time data on children’s experiences during home learning’ IFS Briefing.Note. https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14848

[2] Doyle, O. (2020) “COVID-19: Exacerbating Educational Inequalities? “Public Policy Ireland. http://publicpolicy.ie/papers/covid-19-exacerbating-educational-inequalities/

[3] Bol, T. (2020) “Inequality in homeschooling during the corona crisis in the Netherlands. First results from the LISS panel” https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hf32q

[4] Lavy, V (2015), “Do Differences in Schools’ Instruction Time Explain International Achievement Gaps? Evidence from Developed and Developing Countries”, Economic Journal 125.

[5] Carlsson, M., Dahl, G. B., Öckert, B. and Rooth, D. (2015) “The Effect of Schooling on Cognitive Skills” Review of Economics and Statistics vol. 97(3) pp. 533–547.

[6] Burgess, S. and Sievertsen, H. (2020) Schools, skills, and learning: The impact of COVID-19 on education. VOX-EU.

[7] Sutton Trust (2020) COVID-19 Impacts: School Shutdown.

[8] Murphy, R. and Wyness, G., 2020. Minority Report: the impact of predicted grades on university admissions of disadvantaged groups (No. 20-07). Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunitites, UCL Institute of Education.

By Dr. Matt Dickson and Professor Lindsey Macmillan

Unlike GCSEs, A-levels, SATs, Scottish Nationals and Scottish Highers, the secondary transfer test (otherwise known as the 11-plus exam) is the only high-stakes school assessment in Britain that is still scheduled to take place, as usual, this year. The test, taken by students beginning year 6 in September of each year, is the primary way in which places at grammar schools are allocated. The top performers on this test are offered a place at a state-funded grammar school, while those below the cut-off threshold attend state-funded comprehensive or secondary modern schools depending on the area. There are currently 163 grammar schools in England, educating around 5% of state secondary school pupils, and selecting their pupils according to their performance on this ‘11-plus’ test.

Why does this ‘business as usual’ approach to this particular exam matter? It matters because we already know from the extensive research literature in this area that access to grammar schools is strongly related to socio-economic status, with more disadvantaged pupils far less likely to attain a grammar school place than their more advantaged peers. This remains true even when comparing those with similar levels of academic achievement. There are numerous reasons for this inequality in access, and many of them will be exacerbated during the current COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown. As a consequence, if the ‘11-plus’ goes ahead as planned, with no account taken of the differential impact of the lockdown on children from different backgrounds, the inequality in access this year is likely to be more extreme than ever.

How unequal is access?

Official statistics show that in 2019 only 3% of grammar school pupils were entitled to free school meals (FSM), compared to the 15% of pupils in non-selective schools across England. This isn’t a perfect comparison as grammar schools are not equally distributed around the country, so this low FSM percentage might just be reflecting the types of areas that grammars tend to be located in. This is partly true, however even when comparing grammar school pupils just to the other children in the same area, stark differences remain: a recent study found 2.5% of grammar pupils are eligible for FSM, compared to 8.9% amongst the other pupils in the area. This disparity is a consistent finding, echoing earlier figures from 2013 and 2006.

Using the binary FSM division is a useful way of contrasting access probabilities but can only tell us about the inequality between (roughly) the lower 15% of the income distribution and the upper 85%, potentially masking important differences in access chances among the children in the middle. An alternative is to look at grammar school place probability across the full socio-economic spectrum and this is what was done in another recent study, using a socio-economic index measure.[1] This index measure is divided into percentiles allowing the probability of attaining a grammar school place to be computed at each point in the socio-economic status (SES) distribution.

This shows that access increases almost linearly with the SES index for the most part, before steepening in gradient in the top quintile of the distribution (see Figure 1). At the 10^th percentile of the distribution, only 6% of children attend a grammar school. This increases slowly such that, at the 40^th percentile – the ‘just about managing’ families – 17% of pupils attend a grammar. By contrast, 51% of children at the 90^th percentile attend a grammar school and 79% of those in the top 1% most affluent families attend a grammar school. In total, half of the grammar school places are taken by the best-off quarter of families.

Notes: Figure 1 from Burgess, Crawford and Macmillan (2018)

Part of this social gradient is driven by the large differences in attainment at age 11 between children from different family backgrounds. Achievement gaps between children from the most and least disadvantaged families open early in childhood and widen through primary school. Gaps in cognitive test scores between children from more and less disadvantaged children are observed as early as age 3 and by the time they hang their coat on their peg for the first time at primary school, children from low- and middle- income families are five months behind children from high-income families in their vocabulary skills. This gap increases through school from Key Stage 1 at age 7 to Key Stage 2 at age 11, at which point pupils from the most disadvantaged families are (on average) over 20 percentiles behind pupils from the most advantaged families in their performance ranking. It is not surprising therefore that we see such a steep gradient in grammar access by SES.

However, even comparing children with the same achievement, there remain large differences in the probability of accessing a grammar school place in selective areas, depending on family socio-economic status. Splitting combined performance on Key Stage 2 (age 11) tests in English, maths and science, into percentiles (1=lowest score; 100=highest score), the chances of grammar attendance for children with the same level of performance but different family backgrounds can be compared. Figure 2 shows that very few pupils in the lower half of the performance distribution go to grammar schools, whatever their socio-economic background. For the upper half, at every point in the performance distribution, there is a clear socio-economic gradient in the probability of attending the grammar school. For example, at the 80^th percentile of attainment, the best-off families have a 70% chance of attending a grammar, compared to only 25% for children from the worst-off families.

Access to grammar school places is very strongly related to family background and this remains the case even when comparing children with the same achievement on national tests at age 11. Whatever advantages grammar school attendance conveys, it is very much concentrated on pupils from more affluent backgrounds.

Notes: Figure 2 from Burgess, Crawford and Macmillan (2018)

 

What factors lead to this disparity in access even for children with the same attainment at age 11 and how will lockdown affect these?

There are a number of reasons why children from disadvantaged backgrounds have lower achievement than their more advantaged peers, and many relate to disadvantaged families facing more constraints in terms of both their resources and their time – constraints that are likely to be tightened during lockdown. Recent research reveals that higher maternal education is associated with better child outcomes in part because it leads to an increase in income but also because it is associated with greater educational resources available in the home during a child’s early life, improving cognitive skills at ages 5 and 7. Similarly, it has been shown that mothers with university degrees spend a higher proportion of time engaging with the child’s learning at home, compared to mothers with no qualifications, and this is linked to increased child literacy and socio-emotional outcomes between ages 3-7 years. Emerging findings on home inputs during lockdown suggest that these gaps in the home learning environment are evident in the ‘homeschooling environment’ too: there are significant concerns over access to electronic devices for learning and the internet. 15% of teachers from deprived schools reported concerns that a substantial portion of their students would not have access to online learning, compared to only 2% of teachers from the most affluent state schools. There are also differences in terms of how confident parents are about helping their children, with more educated parents much more likely to report they feel confident in directing their children’s learning.

These barriers in terms of the home environment are exacerbated by the investment that most advantaged parents make in their children’s education in the form of extra-curricular tutoring. More advantaged parents are more likely to invest in extra English and maths lessons and arrange tutoring or coaching. This is particularly pronounced in selective areas, and in the subjects that are core to the ‘11 plus’ examination (but not in science, which is not an ‘11 plus’ subject), supporting the view of grammar school headteachers that children from more affluent, middle-class families are coached to pass the entrance exam. This inequality enhancing investment and coaching happens in every year, but the emerging evidence from the Sutton Trust suggests that this continues even more so this year: children in households earning more than £60k are currently twice as likely to be receiving tutoring during school closure as those children in households earning under £30k.

In sum, the evidence suggests that all of these barriers will be more pronounced for the current cohort of year 5s who are due to sit the ‘11 plus’ examination in September 2020. The current school shutdown is very likely to widen the achievement gap between the most and least disadvantaged pupils with direct impacts on who accesses grammar schools.

What are the alternatives to ‘business as usual’?

Unlike other high stakes exams where alternative methods are available to assign grades – i.e. coursework grades, module marks, teacher evaluations – this route is not really feasible for the ‘11-plus’ exam. While all pupils in areas with selective schools are eligible to take the test, state primary schools are not allowed to spend time directly preparing children for the test and the test itself is standalone rather than being part of the child’s profile of work within the school year, making it difficult to transpose other assessments into a predicted outcome of the test. Moreover, teachers would be reluctant to risk undermining relationships with local parents if the future school destination of pupils – and everything this bifurcation entails – is determined solely by the teachers’ assessment.

Two policies that could be implemented, with or without the deferral of the exam date, are the provision of a ‘pupil premium’ type of payment/voucher to allow lower-income families to access additional tutoring in English and maths for their year 5 children. This would help to mitigate some of the resource constraints faced by disadvantaged families, although this still raises questions over methods of delivery with social distancing going nowhere fast. Another option, and one that is becoming more widely accepted in access to higher education, is the contextualising of marks on this year’s test, taking into account the socio-economic circumstances of each child. Marks are already adjusted in some settings to account for the month of birth of the child (adjusting up the younger summer-born kids). This type of explicit adjustment, based on socio-economic status, would go some way to acknowledging the differential experiences of these children in the lead up to this important junction in their education path.

Reference:

Burgess, S., Crawford, C. Macmillan, L. 2018. Access to grammar schools by socio-economic status. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, vol. 50(7): 1381-1385.

[1] The index is constructed from the index of multiple deprivation (IMD) scores, A Classification of Residential Neighbourhoods (ACORN) categories (based on the socio-economic characteristics, financial holdings and property details of the 15 nearest households), and the proportion of the nearest 150 households working in professional or managerial occupations, with education at Level 3 (post-compulsory) or above and who own their own home, in addition to FSM eligibility.