Educational achievement in selective and comprehensive local education authorities: a configurational analysis

Abstract

Selective and comprehensive school systems vary in both the degree and timing of selection. To study the consequences of such variation, cross-national comparisons are usually undertaken. Given that cultural differences between countries affect pathways and outcomes, apportioning causal influence in such studies can be difficult. In 1970s Britain, selective and comprehensive systems coexisted. This enables us to compare the influences of organisational arrangements without the complication of national cultural differences. We analyse, for children of various abilities, while taking account of gender and class, the effect on achievement of experiencing comprehensive or selective schooling. Assuming that contextual and individual factors work conjuncturally in producing outcomes, we employ Ragin's configurational Qualitative Comparative Analysis. By treating cases in the National Child Development Study as configurations of factors, we are able to analyse the sufficient and necessary conditions for achievement. We find that system differences affect only some high-ability children's educational outcomes.

Keywords:

• selective schooling
• comprehensive schools
• Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)
• social class
• National Child Development Study
• cognitive ability

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by an Economic and Social Research Council research fellowship [RES-063-27-0240] awarded to J.G.

Notes

1. Clearly, comprehensive schools can take different organisational forms, with greater or lesser internal differentiation by measured ability or early achievement. Some early advocates of comprehensives stressed the advantages of social mixing within comprehensives, while others wanted to see children of differing abilities in the same classrooms. Most of the comprehensive schools in Britain at this period were characterised by fairly high degrees of internal differentiation. For example, around 75% of English classes and over 85% of mathematics classes attended by 16 year olds in the NCDS were streamed by ability.

2. The Programme for International Student Assessment, a large-scale international comparison of educational attainment.

3. This is the programme of work undertaken as part of an Economic and Social Research Council research fellowship held by J.G., with B.C. as her mentor. The fellowship is entitled ‘Exploring and Evaluating the Use of Configurational Methods in Large n Contexts: Transitions in the English and German Educational Systems’.

4. This is true in the crisp context, where a case is either completely in or completely out of a set. Within fuzzy-set QCA, cases can have partial membership in a set and therefore assessing quasi-sufficiency becomes a more complex and contentious matter. Since this paper uses crisp sets only, we do not discuss fuzzy sets here but refer the reader to Ragin (2000, 2005, 2008) as well as Cooper (2005) and Cooper and Glaesser (2010).

5. In fuzzy-set QCA, things are more complicated.

6. Readers concerned that such threshold-setting seems arbitrary should bear in mind that much decision-making in the social sciences involves the researcher’s judgement. An example is the choice of a 5% level in significance testing.

7. Note that this diagram is not to scale. It is also idealised because not all cases with the conditions do actually achieve the outcome, but for simplicity’s sake this is not represented in the diagram.

8. The data in the NCDS is in the form of each father’s socio-economic group. We have used the approach of Heath and McDonald (1987) to recode these data to produce an approximation to the Goldthorpe scheme.

9. It is also the case that there was a specific reason for choosing 20% earlier, in that around this proportion of children entered selective schools in selective LEAs. No such reason applies here.