Disparity in student achievement within and across secondary schools: an analysis of department results in English, maths and science in New Zealand

Abstract

It has been reported in the literature that the disparities of student achievement within schools are often larger than the disparity across schools. In the secondary school context, analysing student achievement data at department level enables a fine-grained approach to identifying particular departments and teachers within them that are enabling students to achieve. This paper describes the steps taken to compare the student assessment results of 41 New Zealand secondary school English, maths and science departments with each other. In some schools results across departments show considerable variation by subject and in other schools results across departments are similar.

Keywords:

• middle school leadership
• school improvement
• school effectiveness
• within-school variance
• secondary schools

Notes

1. ‘Learning for tomorrow's world: First results from PISA’ (OECD 2003, 162).

2. Starpath: Project for Tertiary Participation and Success.

3. Data source: NZQA Web Statistics as at 2 April 2008. Query ref: Q8034, Data and data analysis, NZQA.

4. Ministry of Education (2006, 19).