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The transition into higher education (HE) is a particularly challenging process for students due to a large variety of difficulties and requirements. Moreover, increasing student numbers and diversity in European HE have complexified the issue of the successful transition to university. Consequently, it is important to further develop our understanding of the heterogeneity of students and the specific challenges that impact their successful and less stressful transitions into higher education. This paper contributes to this scientific endeavour. More precisely, a study was carried out among 1,048 first-year students from a French-speaking Belgian university . Using latent profile analysis, our results yielded five profiles representing different combinations of achievement predictors (high school grade, socio-economic status, informed-choice, and self-efficacy beliefs). When comparing the profiles, our results further highlighted key differences in the way students experienced the specific challenges associated with the transition and succeeded at the end of the first year. The discussion of the results allowed us to provide practical implications and future perspectives on the thorny issue of diversity into the transition to HE.

The concept of moderate learning difficulties (MLD) is not clearly understood in its definition and in its general use. Nevertheless, as a distinct area of special educational needs (SEN) this category has constituted about a quarter of all of those pupils identified as having SEN in England. This paper reports the analysis of findings from an ongoing research project in an attempt to improve understanding of the MLD category. Pupils (aged 12–14 years) identified as having MLD were compared with others in the same classes identified as having either specific learning difficulties or low attainments in terms of literacy, reasoning and dispositional measures. The paper shows that the label of MLD is often used in an over-generalised way in schools and that although there are some differences in reasoning and literacy abilities between those identified as having MLD and those who have not, no such differences were found in learner self-concept and in pupils’ attitudes to education and learning questioning th...

This meta-analytic review examines the relationships between students' sense of school belonging and students' motivational, social-emotional, behavioural, and academic functioning in secondary education. Moreover, it examines to what extent these relationships differ between different student groups (grade level, SES), measurement instruments, and region. The meta-analysis included 82 correlational studies, published in peer-reviewed journals between 2000 and 2018. Results revealed, on average, a small positive correlation with academic achievement, and small to moderate positive correlations with motivational outcomes such as mastery goal orientations; with social-emotional outcomes such as self-concept and self-efficacy; and with behavioural outcomes such as behavioural, cognitive, and agentic engagement. A small negative correlation is observed with absence and dropout rates. Similar results are found across different student groups (grade level, SES). Although the results vary to some extent across measurement instruments and region, generally, the results reveal that school belonging plays an important role in students' school life.

National value‐added datasets have recently become available that record a pupil’s progress from Key Stage 2 right through to GCSE. Such a dataset is clearly a useful tool for assessing the impact various characteristics of secondary schools have on pupil performance. This paper reports on a research project which involved the use of a variety of statistical techniques, including multi‐level modelling, to explore the impact of single‐sex education and school size on pupils’ progress and opportunities. The analysis suggests that single‐sex education is particularly beneficial to girls in comprehensive schools and to boys in selective schools. Furthermore, girls’ schools were found to counter traditional sex‐stereotyping in subject choices. In terms of school size, the results show that medium‐sized schools obtain slightly better results than very large or very small schools. The paper concludes by exploring alternative explanations of the identified effects.

Discourses about the value of effort and hard work are prevalent and powerful in many western societies and educational contexts. Yet, paradoxically, in these same contexts effortless achievement is often lauded, and in certain discourses is heralded as the pinnacle of success and a sign of genius. In this paper we interrogate discourses about effort and especially ‘effortlessness’ in Swedish and English educational contexts. Informed, in particular, by interview data generated in upper secondary schools in Sweden and secondary schools in England, we address the questions: why is effortless achievement attractive, and for whom is it possible to be discursively positioned as an effortless achiever? We argue that the subject position of ‘effortless achiever’ is not available to all categories of students equally, and for some it would be almost impossible to attain; the intersections of gender, social class, ethnicity and institutional setting are influential. We end by considering the problematic implications of effortless achievement discourses.

This paper reports on a national study, involving a mixed-method research design comprising a randomised controlled trial (RCT), text analysis, student and teacher interviews and lesson observations. It set out to investigate whether contextualised teaching of grammar, linked to the teaching of writing, would improve student outcomes in writing and in metalinguistic understanding. The RCT involved 744 students in 31 schools in the south-west and the Midlands of England, and was a blind randomisation study. Classes were randomly allocated to either a comparison or intervention group, after the sample had been matched for teacher linguistic subject knowledge (LSK). The statistical data were complemented by three interviews per teacher and three interviews with a focus student in each class, plus three lesson observations in each class, giving a data-set of 93 teacher interviews, 93 student interviews and 93 lesson observations. In addition, the final pieces of writing produced for each scheme of work were c...

This paper focuses on the relationship between preferential teaching approach (PTA) and the concept of teachers' questioning practices (TQP), as part of a large‐scale three‐year project aimed at developing the scholarship of teaching and learning at one Portuguese university. In order to contribute to understandings of how teachers' questioning is connected to teachers' concepts and motivations, two dimensions were considered for analysis: (1) teachers' main changes in their PTA and TQP, when lecturing to undergraduates, during the three years of collaboration; and (2) differences in teachers' PTA and TQP when lecturing students at different academic levels. Data were gathered through observation of master and undergraduate lectures, during the 2009/2010 academic year. All lectures were audio‐taped. Fifty per cent of these were fully transcribed and analysed considering TQP. Teachers responded twice to a Portuguese version of the revised approaches to teaching inventory, one for each academic level, and w...

This paper, based on ESRC‐funded research work in four case study schools, explores the ‘pressures’ to ‘deliver’ which bear upon English secondary schools in relation to GCSE performance. It further illustrates the ways in which pressure is transformed into tactics which focus on particular students, with the effect of ‘rationing’ education in the schools. Foucault’s analysis from Discipline and Punish is deployed to examine these tactics and to relate them to more general changes in the regime of techniques and ‘play of dominations’ operating in English schools.

Chinese supplementary schools have been accused of having ‘old‐fashioned’ and ineffective teaching methods, with most teaching being undertaken by ‘unqualified’ volunteer parent teachers. But how do pupils themselves interpret and experience the complementary school setting and to what extent do they feel it affects their learning? Drawing on empirical data from an ESRC study, including classroom observations and interviews with 60 British‐Chinese pupils and 21 teachers across six Chinese supplementary schools, this paper explores pupils’ preferred teaching/learning approaches and questions to what extent do pupils feel the culture and organisation of Chinese schools helps them to learn? Indeed, might complementary schools contribute in any way to British‐Chinese pupils’ phenomenally high achievement within mainstream education? The analyses highlight both positive and negative aspects of the young people’s experiences, paying particular attention to the implications for their constructions of learner ide...

New Zealand’s literacy strategy seeks to translate into reality the broad policy goals of equipping all New Zealanders with the knowledge, skills and values to be successful citizens of the twenty‐first century. The central policy concern is reflected in international surveys showing that although the country’s student achievement is above the international average in literacy, the achievement profiles show very high variability, stratified along ethnic lines. Concerns about those not achieving as well as others form much of the focus of literacy policies in many western education jurisdictions and in New Zealand’s policy‐in‐use as expressed in the literacy strategy. Two differentially effective professional development initiatives are analysed in this paper using a sense‐making theoretical framework. These initiatives formed a major component of the literacy strategy and were aimed at raising the literacy achievement of students in both deep and surface features of reading and writing. The relevance of t...

The importance of school transitions for pupil adjustment, particularly their impact on later well‐being and attainment, remains contested. This paper draws on data from a longitudinal, school‐based study of over 2000 Scottish pupils, first surveyed in 135 primary schools (age 11) in 1994, and followed up in 43 secondary schools (age 13 and 15) and again after leaving school (age 18/19) in 2002/3. The length of follow‐up makes this study unique in transition research. After a year in secondary school (age 13), the majority recalled having had difficulties of adjustment to both school and peer social systems at the beginning of secondary education. While the primary (but not secondary) school played a small part in accounting for different transition experiences, controlling for a wide range of sociodemographic and other factors, personal characteristics were much more important. Respondents of lower ability and lower self‐esteem experienced poorer school transitions; those who were anxious, less prepared ...

School transfer acts like a prism, diffracting children’s social and learning trajectories. In this paper I explore this sociological effect through two case studies of children moving from the primary to the secondary school. The impacts of the school, peer and family fields are explored using Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and shifts in the relative power of these fields are traced across the primary–secondary interface. My analysis explains why, decades after Nisbet and Entwistle first linked poor school transition with social class, it is still the case that the economically and culturally more well‐endowed make the most of moving school. So it is that through processes of harmonization and dissonance, of compliance and resistance, children navigate, and are steered, from their embodied social and education pasts towards future constrained possibilities. These processes are partially contextualized in the learning of school mathematics.

This paper reports on research into how schools, parents and local communities work together to support students’ learning during the transition from primary to secondary schools in what is referred to as the middle years of schooling. The research was conducted in four Australian schools within one urban school district. These schools were located in low‐income communities and had high numbers of bilingual students. We mapped existing school–community links that support student learning by identifying key participants and describing how they perceive these links—particularly in relation to improving students’ engagement in learning. Our approach was qualitative in nature, utilizing interviews and focus groups. We found that students, families and teachers commonly expressed the view that learning is limited to schooling; that contacts between schools and communities about learning are difficult to negotiate and are heavily mediated by school principals; and we describe a lack of consensus about the natur...

This paper reports the views of students in a secondary comprehensive school on what made them want to learn, what made it difficult for them to learn, and what teachers could do to help them learn. It relates these reported views to some established psychological views of motivation and to models derived from attribution theory. It investigates the views of students identified as under- and over-achievers through the comparison of CAT scores in Year 7 and GCSE performance, and reveals that ‘conformity to the work and social norms of the classroom’, and ‘communication with teachers’, were two key factors which distinguished under- and over-achievers. However, the differences were not always in directions which might have been predicted.

Perhaps the most prevailing inequalities in educational achievement in England are those associated with socio-economic status (SES), ethnicity or gender. However little research has sought to compare the relative size of these gaps or to explore interactions between these factors. This paper analyses the educational achievement at age 11, 14 and 16 of over 15,000 students from the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE). At age 16 the achivement gap associated with social class was twice as large as the biggest ethnic gap and six times as large as the gender gap. However the results indicate that ethnicity, gender and SES do not combine in a simple additive fashion, rather there are substantial interactions particularly between ethnicity and SES and between ethnicity and gender. At age 16 among low SES students all ethnic minority groups achieve significantly better than White British students (except Black Caribbean boys who do not differ from White British boys), but at high SES only Indian students outperform White British students. A similar pattern of results was apparent in terms of progress age 11-16, with White British low SES students and Black Caribbean boys (particularly the more able) making the least progress. Parents' educational aspirations for their child and students' own educational aspirations, academic self concept, frequency of completing homework, truancy and exclusion could account for the minority ethnic advantage at low SES, but conditioning on such factors simultaneously indicates substantial ethnic underachievement at average and high SES. Accounts of educational achievement framed exclusively in terms of social class, ethnicity or gender are insufficient and the results challenge educational researchers to develop more nuanced accounts of educational success or failure.

The paper sets current public debates about gender and schooling in England into an historical and United Kingdom‐wide context. Once that work is done, the position is much more complicated than the mass‐media coverage would suggest. Attacks on English schools for failing boys are examined as a ‘discourse of derision’. An agenda for future research is included.

The publication of schools’ examination results in England has reopened in sharper form the old debate about whether single‐sex or co‐educational schooling is better for secondary education. This paper considers both the claimed academic and social advantages. Performance at GCSE and A level has been analysed for boys and girls separately in single‐sex and co‐educational schools using national data supplied by the Department for Education and Employment, OFSTED and the Independent Schools Information Service. School experiences and ease of adjustment to university have been explored through in‐depth interviews with a sample of 100 students in their second term at university, balanced for sex and type of school. There is enough in the evidence to see how the various claims have arisen, but they are nevertheless caricatures of a complex reality. The outstanding performance of the single‐sex schools in the examination league tables has much more to do with academic selection, socioecononiic backgrou...

This paper represents a 10‐year follow‐up to research funded by the Equal Opportunities Commission for Northern Ireland. It examines the impact of government science education policy through the uptake of science A levels and patterns of attainment among boys and girls. The nature of the study allows for an examination of the consequences of developing changes in educational policy following the introduction of the National Curriculum. The sample included 1600 year‐12 pupils from 21 Northern Ireland selective grammar schools, representing 17 per cent of the total population of pupils in this sector during the academic year 1994/95. The results show that on average, boys were taking more science A levels than girls. This held true for pupils in coeducational as compared with single‐sex schools; for pupils in Protestant as compared with Catholic schools; and for pupils from non‐manual as compared with manual backgrounds. Among boys the average number of science A levels taken in 1995 was lower than...

After a brief review of internationally recognized empirical studies of the relative impact of single‐sex and coeducational secondary schooling on girls’ performance, the paper provides impact estimates drawn from two educational surveys carried out in a region which has many state‐supported single‐sex secondary schools, namely, Northern Ireland. Data relating to girls from two pupil cohorts were re‐analysed using multilevel statistical software not available to the original researchers whose main concerns are not considered here. Six outcomes were investigated. They were all related to pupil performance in public examinations taken, typically, after five years of secondary schooling. After adjustment for a range of pupil‐intake measures and for the selective status of the schools (grammar/nongrammar), a small achievement advantage favouring single‐sex schooling for girls is reported. However, this advantage was not statistically significant as far as any one of the six outcome measures was conce...

In this paper results are reported from a longitudinal study of the same pupils’ perspectives on school and school work from 7 to 16 years. It reports on changes and stability over time in pupil views, ethnic and sex differences, and associations between pupil views and their school attainments. Pupils were from inner‐city, largely working‐class, areas. The sample comprised British black (of Afro‐Caribbean origin) and white pupils. They were interviewed at 7, 11 and 16 years (n = 133, 175, 108, respectively). Topics covered included general attitudes on the value of and interest in school, maths and reading/English, and keeping up with and understanding school work. There was little support for strong claims about growing disaffection toward school. Pupils explained their academic progress largely in terms of internal factors over which they had control, such as effort. There was an ethnic difference at 16 years with white pupils less positive than black children about school and their own attain...

Recent research has foregrounded the importance of student engagement with feedback on writing (Quinton & Smallbone, 2010; Zhang & Hyland, 2018; Handley, Price, & Millar, 2011). At the same time, there is a small but growing body of scholarship exploring the role that feedback plays in developing discipline-specific competencies in student writers in an L2 context (Hyland, 2013). The present study aims to contribute to this burgeoning field by exploring the complex relationship between student attitude to peer and teacher feedback, academic achievement, and dialogic engagement with such feedback, with especial particular focus on the development of literary disciplinary knowledge in an L2 context. The findings of this mixed method exploratory study reveal a positive correlation between student attitude to feedback pertaining to disciplinary knowledge development, and achievement within the field of literary studies. This stands in contrast to other findings in this study which see only a weak correlation between attitudes to both peer and teacher feedback, and writing performance. Furthermore, this study argues that active engagement with feedback is linked to greater levels of discipline-specific writing competencies.

Transferring to another school or leaving the educational system altogether has considerable consequences not only for the student who makes the decision to leave, but also for the students who sta...

Academic achievement is regarded an indicator of the success of individuals, schools, universities and countries. ‘Success’ is typically measured using performance indicators such as test results, completion rates and other objective measures. By contrast, in this article we explore students’ subjective understandings and constructions of success, and discourses about ‘successful’ students in higher education contexts that are renowned for being demanding and pressured. We draw on data from 87 semi-structured interviews with students and staff on law, medicine and engineering physics programmes in a prestigious university in Sweden. We focus particularly upon academic expectations, effort levels, and programme structures and cultures. Achieving top grades while undertaking a range of extracurricular activities was valorised in all contexts. Top grades were especially impressive if they were attained without much effort (especially in engineering physics) or stress (especially in law and medicine); we introduce a new concept of ‘stress-less achievement’ in relation to the latter. Furthermore, being sociable as well as a high academic achiever signified living a ‘good life’ and, in law and medicine, professional competence. We discuss the implications of the dominant constructions of success, concluding that (upper) middle-class men are most likely to be read as ‘successful students’, especially in engineering physics. Staging the successful student

Creating authentic learning opportunities in schools has been an important mission for educators and educational researchers, where ‘authentic’ is generally understood to mean connecting school education to students’ current and future identities, experiences and expertise. This article aims to problematise the taken-for-granted notion of authentic learning based on data from a study on media literacy education in Singapore. Thirty-two secondary students discussed their views on and experiences with school-based media/literacy education in focus group discussions with researchers. While the findings highlight students’ articulation of a disconnect between in-school learning and their everyday experiences, they also reveal youth’s expectations for school learning to aid their academic success. Authentic learning, from the points of view of students, thus encompasses opportunities for real-life connections as well as preparation for achievement valued by schools. The study has implications for conte...

After an introduction that briefly describes the two studies on which this article is based, we provide background information on Mexico’s education system and the sociopolitical context of the country, and we explain relevant issues of this context for education, arising from the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic political system, at the end of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. Major large-scale assessments in Mexico are then described, as well as other policies looking to improve achievement, and how the way of disseminating the results of assessments was modified during the period under consideration. In the central part of the text, the impact of tests results’ dissemination on educational policies and reforms is explored. Our work focuses on identifying the relationship between dissemination of assessments and introduction of other policies for improving educational quality, with information derived from document review and from interviews with key stakeholders.

The article reports some of the major findings of a large‐scale longitudinal study of the progress and development of an age cohort of pupils during the junior years of education. The pupils attended a stratified random sample of 50 Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) primary schools during the period 1980‐84. The focus of the paper is an investigation of the existence and size of the effects of school membership upon these pupils’ progress in a variety of cognitive outcomes (reading, writing and mathematics), attainment in oracy (which was measured only on one occasion), and upon several non‐cognitive outcomes (attendance, attitudes, behaviour and self‐concept). Particular attention is paid to the identification and separation of the effects of school membership from those attributable to background factors, sex and age. For the analysis of the effects of school upon pupils’ progress in cognitive areas, initial attainment in the relevant area is controlled and acts as the baseline against wh...

Recent studies have shown that sectors defined by the denominational status and by the era in which schools were founded account for some of the variation in the effectiveness of schooling in Scotland. Other components of the total variation among schools can be attributed to variation in the social composition of schools, and to variation in the process and teaching characteristics of schools. The present paper complements these studies by considering other sources of intra‐system variation. In particular, it investigates variation in pupil‐attainment among different types of communities, and among educational authorities (EAs). It focuses on analyses of pupil attainment in fourth year Ordinary grade English and arithmetic, and on an overall attainment measured across subjects in the Scottish Certificate of Education (SCE) examinations. The effectiveness of schools is then assessed as the variation in pupil‐level attainment that is associated with schools, both before and after adjustment for pu...

If every child is to have a fairly even chance of a good education, every child must have a fairly even chance of being taught by high-quality teachers. However, high levels of social segregation in UK schools concentrate disadvantaged young people in some schools creating conditions that may deter many teachers. This study investigates whether higher qualified new teachers are deterred from working in challenging schools by examining the average entrance requirements of teachers’ degree subject combined with the university grade teachers achieved of all newly qualified teachers in the UK over three recent years (n = 37,039) and relating these qualifications to the results and socio-economic make-up of schools they sought and found employment. Higher qualified teachers were found to be most attracted to schools with high attainment, next most to those that achieve greater progress, next most to schools with more affluent pupils and least of all to schools that achieve greater progress accounting for pupil...

‘Effort’ and ‘ability’ (understood as potential, intelligence or achievement) are concepts widely used in the everyday language of schooling in Britain but each term lacks clear definition of its use in the school context. Meanwhile, the assessment of effort, alongside that of achievement, remains widespread. This article reports on an exploratory case study of conceptions of effort among three major actors in an English secondary school. Qualitative and quantitative data from questionnaires and interviews with teachers, students and parents at an English comprehensive school were collected. Analysis reveals that understandings of ‘effort’ are not uniform. Rather, ‘effort’ is a shorthand term, which can be used variably, therefore can be construed as a tool of negotiation, or a form of investment in a set of aims distinctive to each group or individual case. There is a strong case for more sustained research into the operationalizing of such key concepts in schools and other professional and workplace set...

In developed countries, increasing emphasis is given to lifelong learning and the importance of the role that schools play in preparing pupils to become independent learners equipped with study strategies for learning beyond compulsory education. In the UK although study skills programmes were popular in schools during the 1980s, interest receded and little research then has investigated the perceptions of studying that young people hold or the array of study skills that they utilise: this despite the wealth of literature focusing on how students approach their studying in higher education. This study explored underlying factors in perceptions of studying among 16-year-old pupils and the relationship between the factors and attainment. The sample comprised 826 pupils drawn from eight schools in Outer London. The schools encompassed pupils who could be regarded as high, middle and low achievers drawn from co-educational and single-sex schools. Pupils completed a self-report questionnaire that was designed ...

For a number of reasons, increasing reliance is being placed on teacher assessment in high-stakes contexts in many countries around the world. Simultaneously, countries that have for some time relied to greater or lesser degrees on teacher assessment for high-stakes purposes are in the process of questioning the validity of that reliance. In principle, teacher assessment has an important role to play in increasing assessment validity by complementing testing to cover subject domains more comprehensively than otherwise would be possible. But what is the evidence regarding the reliability of teacher assessment in high-stakes contexts? The answer is that the evidence is limited and often ambiguous. Research has revealed that teachers can be influenced by a number of construct-irrelevant factors as they work towards their judgements, factors such as gender, socio-economic background, effort and behaviour, that risk biasing their assessments. And when considering construct-relevant achievement evidence teacher...

Within the Caribbean, there has been a perception that students are underachieving in mathematics. This assessment has seemingly been based amongst other things upon the proportion of students who are successful in mathematics compared to other subjects in external examinations. This notion was investigated in a case study of secondary schools in Antigua and Barbuda. Statistical data showed that student achievement in the examinations was on average lower in mathematics than across all subjects, including English language. However, this finding was not ‘true’ of students across all school‐types, generally a proxy for social class in Caribbean settings. In particular, the mathematics achievement of students in single‐sex schools was not far different from their performances in other subjects, but was markedly different from that of students in mixed‐sex schools. This finding concerning school‐type suggested at an underlying factor in many students’ mathematics performance, as school‐type in the Caribbean i...

Accurate marking is crucial to the reliability and validity of public examinations, in England and internationally. Factors contributing to accuracy have been conceptualised as affecting either marking task demands or markers’ personal expertise. The aim of this empirical study was to develop this conceptualisation through investigating the relative effects on accuracy of some key contributory factors. This was done in the context of an international biology examination designed for 16‐year‐olds. Forty‐two markers participated, comprising five groups: (1) experienced examiners, (2) biology teachers, (3) graduates in biology, (4) graduates in other subjects, and (5) non‐graduates. The design enabled the relative effects on accuracy of the following factors to be elicited: marking experience, teaching experience, highest education in a relevant subject, highest education in any subject and gender. The significance of markers’ accuracy on standardisation samples was also investigated. Twenty‐three examinatio...

Much of the argument about comparability of examination standards is at cross‐purposes; contradictory positions are in fact often both defensible, but they are using the same words to mean different things. To clarify this, two broad conceptualisations of standards can be identified. One sees the standard in the observed phenomena of performance in relation to specified criteria (performance view); the other sees it in terms of the levels achieved by comparable candidates (statistical view). These views are quite different and can lead to contradictory conclusions. Both views are problematic conceptually and operationally. The alternative view, that standards cannot be defined but are a pure convention, is rejected as inadequate. Standards of different examinations can legitimately be compared provided there is a common construct in terms of which to compare them. There is no absolute sense in which one examination is harder than another – it depends on the construct. If such a construct is hypothesised, ...

This academic review critically examines the theoretical and empirical bases of claims made for the educational benefits of physical education and school sport (PESS). An historical overview of the development of PESS points to the origins of claims made in four broad domains: physical, social, affective and cognitive. Analysis of the evidence suggests that PESS has the potential to make contributions to young people’s development in each of these domains. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, there is suggestive evidence of a distinctive role for PESS in the acquisition and development of children’s movement skills and physical competence. It can be argued that these are necessary, if not deterministic conditions of engagement in lifelong physical activity. In the social domain, there is sufficient evidence to support claims of positive benefits for young people. Importantly, benefits are mediated by environmental and contextual factors such as leadership, the involvement of young people in decision‐making, an emphas...

The authors investigate the size and stability of departmental effects in English secondary schooling during a period in which extensions to parental choice and annual publication of school performance tables had significantly increased competitive pressures on schools. Their database of nearly 450 English secondary schools enables them to investigate departments in terms of both their unadjusted and value-added average students' performance in national examinations. They are interested in the nature of within-school competition and concentrate upon two subjects, geography and history, which were optional subjects in each of these schools. In general, they find that relative departmental performance varies significantly over time and that few departments manage to persistently out-perform the other subject in their school. They conclude that given the instability of relative departmental performance, publication of department-level performance indicators is unlikely to generate strong incentives for departments to raise their effort and effectiveness.

We explore the conditions under which students engage with, or disengage from, learning at university within the context of increased student diversity. We discuss the concept and use of academic engagement and disengagement but focus on the dynamics of disengagement in two comparable first year computing modules at a pre‐ and a post‐1992 university. The findings from this study suggest that there are many periods in which the learning and teaching environment, pedagogy and/or content do not academically engage the diverse interests and meet the needs of the range of students represented. Drawing upon this analysis, the reflections of participating teachers and interviews with their students, we consider what might be done to increase and widen academic engagement in the computing classroom. We conclude by drawing out some of the tentative implications that might be useful to explore in other universities.

Advocates of using a US‐style SAT for university selection claim that it is fairer to applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds than achievement tests because it assesses potential, not achievement, and that it allows finer discrimination between top applicants than GCEs. The pros and cons of aptitude tests in principle are discussed, focusing on school‐proofness claims, concluding that it is invalid to assess suitability for university using measures purportedly immune to study, and unfair to allocate opportunities according to qualities acquired by chance. Considering empirical findings, aptitude tests’ claims to school‐proofness and their power to predict academic achievement – relative to achievement tests – are found wanting. Methods of evaluating pupils’ achievement within an educational context are discussed, including a national system for ranking university applicants that accounts for absolute achievement and educational context. Pupils’ ranks would form the basis of universities’ first sifts, a...

The attitudes and behaviour of 1040 pupils aged 12–14 years have been measured at the beginning and end of the school year with a battery of attitude, motivation and personality tests in an investigation of the differential effects of group work compared to whole‐class learning. A total of 44 secondary teachers of English, mathematics and science and their classes have been studied over a two‐year period. While subject attitudes and motivation scores fell significantly during the year, attitudes to group working held steady. Extraversion has been found to have a significant association with a positive approach to group work in English and mathematics. Cluster analysis has been used to identify four broad types of pupils who respond to group work in characteristically different manners. Two of the types show contrasting personality profiles, but display the least positive attitudes to school and classroom work. In 13 of 40 classes, these rather negative pupils made up at least half the class. There is evid...

The curriculum is often the target of reform and governments use a range of accountability measures to ensure compliance. This paper examines the decisions schools in England make regarding history...

There is no published empirically based research on the new GCE synoptic assessment. Consequently no published research has been undertaken on its role, how it is taught or how pupils are prepared for the assessment. Neither is there a published evaluation of the effectiveness of teaching the synoptic units. It is these issues which are addressed in the present study. One hundred and twenty‐five chemistry teachers replied to a questionnaire about the teaching strategies that they used and how they prepared candidates for A2 assessments. The analysis of the questionnaire responses found that it is the type of assessment—coursework or examination—that closely corresponded with the teaching strategies, perceived learning outcomes and approaches to preparing pupils for A2 assessments. The questionnaire responses were merged with GCSE and A level results. A series of multilevel models were fitted to identify any relationship between relative progress from mean GCSE scores to A level unit results and the questi...

The analysis considers two key questions relating to pupil progress. First, whether the ‘route’ or pattern of ‘steps’ a pupil takes between Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 matters in terms of their performance in the Key Stage 2 assessments. Secondly, whether such progress is influenced by the primary school a pupil attends. The research draws on a unique data‐set with data on the performance of over 3000 pupils in over 300 primary schools at Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, and in optional tests at the end of Years 3, 4, and 5. The analysis identifies four broad patterns of pupil progress between the two key stages—equal‐sized, increasing or decreasing, and variable steps. Pupils taking the ‘equal‐sized’ route made most progress in terms of Reading, but the differences between this route and the least successful one were comparatively modest, amounting to not more than 3 months progress. In Maths, by contrast, the differences were more substantial with pupils on the ‘decreasing’ steps route making most progress and...

Despite a vast increase in numbers in higher education, the lower socio-economic groups continue to be under-represented. Many reasons have been put forward for this: they include institutional and financial factors; low academic achievement and aspirations; lack of knowledge of HE; and perceptions of universities as elitist. While a number of studies have identified knowledge and perceptions of HE as factors that may deter working-class groups from aspiring to go to university, there has been limited investigation of the views of those who do not enter HE. This study focuses on constructions of going to university among young working-class non-participants. Drawing on data collected in focus groups, it analyses the discourses used in talking about entry qualifications, financial arrangements, studying at university and students. It is suggested that these young working-class people are to some extent aware of the hierarchy of HE entry routes and institutions and that they believe that the openings most e...

This research was carried out between 1985 and 1989 against a background of concern that, in spite of the contemporary education system technically being open equally to both girls and boys, girls were nevertheless being denied full equality of opportunity within it. It set out to investigate the claims of sex stereotyping in schools and subsequent female fear of success by measuring pupils' attitudes towards high academic achievement in girls. The research was carried out in different types of school, mixed or single sex. However, the social and academic background of the schools concerned; the development of pupils' sex-role identities, academic self-concepts and global selfesteem; and their attitudes to (a) high achievers in general and (b) women's rights and roles in contemporary society, were also considered as variables. A total of 1823 pupils took part in all, 409 in the pilot study and the remaining 1414 in the main investigation. In the main study, the research was carried out among pupi...

This classroom study adopted an ethnographic‐interpretative research strategy in studying the detailed interactions and behaviours of the main participants in a secondary‐school physics laboratory. The observed group consisted of all students within an intact class during the first semester of the initial year of a two‐year course leading up to the Western Australia Tertiary Entrance Examination. Observers made field notes, over a total period of 12 weeks, during each of the four 50‐minute lessons which took place each week. One modification of the normal ethnographic approach adopted here was that the physics teacher participated in the post‐observational discussions and the weekly meetings of the ‘official’ observers. Additional data came from students’ working files and tests, teacher notes on lesson planning and distributed class notes, questionnaires completed by students and interviews with students and the teacher. Some teaching episodes were also tape recorded. This variety of sources of ...

There is a substantial international literature around the impact of different types of grouping by attainment on the academic and personal outcomes of students. This literature, however, is sparse...