Faith schools and pupils' progress through primary education

Abstract

The impact of faith schools on the performance and progress of their pupils has been studied using data from the National Pupil Database (NPD). The value‐added analysis was carried out using multilevel modelling, controlling for prior attainment as well as a range of background variables, including ethnicity, sex, eligibility for free school meals (FSM), alternative measures of deprivation based on census information, special educational needs (SEN) and English as an additional language (EAL). The analysis confirmed that all faith schools, in particular, Roman Catholic and Church of England schools, made slightly more progress with their pupils than non‐faith schools. It also showed that pupils with SEN attending faith schools performed better at key stage 2 than pupils with SEN in non‐faith schools.

Keywords:

• faith school
• multilevel modelling
• fixed effect
• random effect

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge our colleagues in the statistical and analysis group at NFER who advised on and supported the work reported here. We also thank Joanna Luke and her team at the DCSF for granting access to the anonymised national dataset in this research.