Evaluating the effectiveness of specialist schools in England

Abstract

In England, the government has encouraged state secondary schools to be more diverse by becoming specialist. This paper reports estimates of the relative effectiveness of specialist schools for pupils' attainment in General Certificate of Secondary School examinations in 2001 compared to nonspecialist comprehensive schools, controlling for pupils' prior attainment at Key Stage 2, gender, age, and school context. Attending a specialist school is found to add 1.4 grades on average to a pupil's GCSE points score. Effectiveness differed according to subject specialism and length of time specialist. This is similar to NFER and DfES findings but smaller than the effects reported by the Specialist School Trust studies.

Notes

1. Education in the UK is a responsibility of the devolved governments of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, so the Department of Education and Skills' remit only extends to England, where specialist schools have grown steadily in number.

2. GCSE is the national leaving examination taken at the end of Year 11, when most pupils are aged 16. Pupils generally take 8 to 10 subjects. GCSE qualifications have been extended to include General National Vocational Qualifications, but for ease of expression GCSE is referred to in the paper rather than GCSE or GNVQ.

3. Schools in England are administered by 150 Local Education Authorities (LEAs), which are responsible for educational standards. Schools, though, have a considerable degree of managerial autonomy.

4. Raised to £126 per pupil in 2003.

5. Excluding middle deemed secondary (DfEE, Statistics of Education: Schools in England 2000, 2000).

6. Schools in special measures or with serious weaknesses cannot become specialist.

7. Foundation schools are LEA maintained but their assets are owned in trust by the Governing Body, which is also the employer of the staff. Voluntary aided and controlled schools have a similar status but are denominational. Community schools are the third governance category—their assets are owned by the LEA, which is also the employer of the schools' staff.

8. From the Annual Schools Census for 2000 – 01.

9. Key Stage 2 national tests in English, maths, and science are taken at the end of Year 6—the final year of primary schooling.

10. Key Stage 3 national tests in English, maths, and science are taken in Year 9 (at age 14).

11. Both studies were conducted by the NFER.

12. Each GCSE subject is graded from A∗ to G (pass) and F (fail). The grades are given numeric scores ranging from 8 for A∗ to 1 for G. These are summarised over all subjects taken to give the total GCSE score for a pupil.

13. The REE designation of specialist status did not match that of the DfES, so the latter was used.

14. The percentage of pupils gaining 5 or more A∗ to C GCSEs is the official indicator of “good” GCSE qualifications.

15. The definition of a secondary modern school in the DfES Autumn Package of school results was used.

16. Most secondary schools admit students from the age of 11: some admit at ages 12 or 13. In the event, lowest age was omitted from the regression results reported because it was consistently insignificant.

17. Sixth form is Years 12 and 13, which follow the end of compulsory schooling after Year 11.

18. Schools which fail an Office for Standards in Education inspection are put into “special measures”. There were 74 secondary schools in special measures in 2001, of which 2 were specialist. They were omitted to increase comparability between specialist and nonspecialists.

19. Unfortunately, data on the percentage of ethnic minority students were available only for 1996 – 1999 but not for 2000 and 2001.

20. Not all the pupils who take GCSEs in Year 11 will have been at their secondary school for the full 5 years. Jesson (2002) acknowledges that mobility cannot be accounted for in these data and cites Ofsted evidence that, on average, inward pupil mobility is 2.5% annually. Like Jesson, we have not been able to account for differences in mobility between schools.

21. This means that the relationship between prior attainment at Key Stage 2 and GCSE or GNVQ is allowed to vary between schools.

22. A linear term in Key Stage 2 attainment, as well as its squared and cubed values were all statistically significant in predicting GCSE total score: the GCSE score rose slightly more than proportionally with Key Stage 2 average score. Linear, squared, and cubed terms in the proportion of students with FSM show that attainment at GCSE declines more than proportionately at first as FSM increases and then the rate of decline tails off at high levels of FSM.

23. The values of the interval variables used in the regressions were standardised. This means that the values of the interaction terms between specialist school and Key Stage 2 attainment and percentage of FSM pupils are zero for a pupil with mean Key Stage 2 attainment attending a school with mean FSM. If the pupil is a boy, the interaction term between specialist and girl is zero. To convert from estimated coefficients for variables measured in standardised units (i.e., standard deviations of GCSE points scores) to those measured in natural units (i.e., actual grades), one has to multiply the coefficient of the dummy variables by the standard deviation of GCSE total exam scores. These are the regression coefficients reported in Tables 4, 6, and 7.

24. The marginal probability is the change in probability of getting 5+ good GCSEs given a change in the value of one of the explanatory variables.

25. Alternatively, it may be that certain types of schools choose particular specialisms, for example, schools with high FSM percentage tend to choose sports as their specialism.