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This paper discusses the effect of social background and ethnicity on educational performance in an area with traditionally poor levels of attainment. It begins by examining the variation in school performance for London and specifically east London. It shows how the disadvantaged nature of the area, as measured by such variables as Mosaic group and ethnic heritage, helps to explain the poor results at GCSE. The paper then changes the focus to schools within a seven-borough area of east London. Using the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) linked to the geodemographic Mosaic codes based on pupils' home postcode, the authors demonstrate that, although ethnicity accounts for some of the variation in performance, this is considerably less than that accounted for by pupil social background. In addition, they show that it is not simply the social background of the individual pupil that affects school performance at GCSE. The proportion of pupils from a given social background plays some role in boosting or diminishing the overall school performance and will influence the performance of individual pupils whatever their background. It is argued that these social background effects together with the school composition effects have a considerable impact on school performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate whether the distance between school and the pupil’s home is related to social background in a six borough area of East London. Also investigated is the extent to which schools in the area perform in line with expectations on the basis of the social composition of their intake. The research involves analysis of the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) to which geodemographic codes supplied by Experian have been attached. We demonstrate that the six schools in the area which achieved the highest average points score at GCSE recruit pupils widely from within the area (and to a lesser extent outside), whilst the lowest performing six schools recruit from much more narrowly defined catchment areas. In terms of school performance, we show that whilst we might expect schools to perform better as they become more distant from inner East London and nearer to the M25, this is not necessarily the case. In our conclusions we argue that these data support the claims made on the basis of ethnographic data about the class nature of school selection and parental choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]