Test Scores, Subjective Assessment and Stereotyping of Ethnic Minorities

We assess whether ethnic minority pupils are subject to low teacher expectations. We exploit the English testing system of “quasi-blind” externally marked tests and “non-blind” internal assessment to compare differences in these assessment methods between White and ethnic minority pupils. We find evidence that some ethnic groups are systematically “under-assessed” relative to their White peers, while some are “over-assessed”. We propose a stereotype model in which a teacher’s local experience of an ethnic group affects assessment of current pupils; this is supported by the data.Subjective assessment, stereotypes, education, test score gaps, ethnic minorities

Parental choice of primary school in England: what ‘type’ of school do parents choose?

We investigate the central premise of the theory of markets in education, namely that parents value academic standards. We ask what parents really want from schools and whether different types of parents have similar preferences. We examine parents’ stated preferences and revealed preferences for schools (their actual choice of school as opposed to what they say they value in a school). More educated and higher socio-economic status (SES) parents are more likely to cite academic standards, whilst less educated and lower SES parents are more likely to cite proximity. More advantaged parents choose better performing schools, particularly in areas with many schools and therefore a lot of potential school choice. More advantaged parents also choose schools with much lower proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals, relative to other schools available to them. Hence whilst parents do not admit to choosing schools on the basis of their social composition, this happens in practice. Most parents get their first choice of school (94%) and this holds both for more and less advantaged parents, though this is partially because poorer parents make more ‘realistic’, i.e. less ambitious, choices. If, in areas where there is a lot of potential competition between schools, more advantaged families have a higher chance of achieving their more ambitious choices that do poorer parents, this could tend to exacerbate social segregation in our schools.school preferences, school choice, parental choice

What parents want: school preferences and school choice

Parental demand for academic performance is a key element in the view that strengthening school choice will drive up school performance. In this paper we analyse what parents look for in choosing schools. We assemble a unique dataset combining survey information on parents' choices plus a rich set of socio-economic characteristics; administrative data on school characteristics, admissions criteria and allocation rules; and spatial data attached to a pupil census to define the de facto set of schools available to each family in the survey. To achieve identification, we focus on cities where the school place allocation system is truth-revealing ("equal preferences"). We take great care in trying to capture the set of schools that each family could realistically choose from. We also look at a large subset of parents who continued living in the same house as before the child was born, to avoid endogenous house/school moves. We then model the choices made in terms of the characteristics of schools and families and the distances involved. School characteristics include measures of academic performance, school socio-economic and ethnic composition, and its faith school status. Initial results showed strong differences in the set of choices available to parents in different socio-economic positions. Our central analysis uses multinomial logistic regression to show that families do indeed value academic performance in schools. They also value school composition -- preferring schools with low fractions of children from poor families. We compute trade-offs between these characteristics as well as between these and distance travelled. We are able to compare these trade-offs for different families. Our results suggest that preferences do not vary greatly between different socio-economic groups once constraints are fully accounted for.school preferences, school choice, parental choice

What Parents Want: School preferences and school choice

Parental demand for academic performance is a key element in the view that strengthening school choice will drive up school performance. In this paper we analyse what parents look for in choosing schools. We assemble a unique dataset combining survey information on parents’ choices plus a rich set of socio-economic characteristics; administrative data on school characteristics, admissions criteria and allocation rules; and spatial data attached to a pupil census to define the de facto set of schools available to each family in the survey. To achieve identification, we focus on cities where the school place allocation system is truth-revealing (“equal preferences”). We take great care in trying to capture the set of schools that each family could realistically choose from. We also look at a large subset of parents who continued living in the same house as before the child was born, to avoid endogenous house/school moves. We then model the choices made in terms of the characteristics of schools and families and the distances involved. School characteristics include measures of academic performance, school socio-economic and ethnic composition, and its faith school status. Initial results showed strong differences in the set of choices available to parents in different socio-economic positions. Our central analysis uses multinomial logistic regression to show that families do indeed value academic performance in schools. They also value school composition – preferring schools with low fractions of children from poor families. We compute trade-offs between these characteristics as well as between these and distance travelled. We are able to compare these trade-offs for different families. Our results suggest that preferences do not vary greatly between different socio-economic groups once constraints are fully accounted for.school preferences, school choice, parental choice

What Parents Want: School Preferences and School Choice

We investigate parents’ preferences for school attributes in a unique data set of survey, administrative, census and spatial data. Using a conditional logit, incorporating characteristics of households, schools and home–school distance, we show that most families have strong preferences for schools’ academic performance. Parents also value schools’ socio-economic composition and distance, which may limit the potential of school choice to improve academic standards. Most of the variation in preferences for school quality across socio-economic groups arises from differences in the quality of accessible schools rather than differences in parents’ preferences, although more advantaged parents have stronger preferences for academic performance

The concurrent detection of chelonid alphaherpesvirus 5 and Chelonia mydas papillomavirus 1 in tumoured and non-tumoured green turtles

Characterised by the growth of benign tumours, fibropapillomatosis (FP) is a debilitating disease that predominantly afflicts the endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas). A growing body of histological and molecular evidence has consistently associated FP tumours with Chelonid alphaherpesvirus 5 (ChHV5), leading this virus to be considered the most likely aetiological agent of FP. However, a recent study which detected both ChHV5 and Chelonia mydas papillomavirus 1 (CmPV1) DNA in FP tumour tissues has challenged this hypothesis. The present study aimed to establish the wider prevalence of CmPV1 and co-occurrence with ChHV5 in marine turtles in waters adjacent to the east coast of Queensland, Australia. This comprehensive molecular survey screened a total of 353 samples from 275 foraging turtles using probe-based qPCR. Three sample categories were used in this study: Group A (FP tumours), Group B (non-tumoured skin from turtles with FP tumours) and Group C (non-tumoured skin from turtles without FP tumours). Concurrent detection of ChHV5 and CmPV1 DNA is reported for all three categories, with the highest rate of concurrent detection reported for Group A samples (43.5%). Collectively, these results pivot the way we think about FP; as an infectious disease where two separate viruses may be at pla

Ranaviruses in captive and wild Australian lizards

Ranaviral infections have been associated with mass mortality events in captive and wild amphibian, fish, and reptile populations globally. In Australia, two distinct types of ranaviruses have been isolated: epizootic haematopoietic necrosis virus in fish and a Frog virus 3-like ranavirus in amphibians. Experimental studies and serum surveys have demonstrated that several Australian native fish, amphibian, and reptile species are susceptible to infection and supported the theory that ranavirus is naturally circulating in Australian herpetofauna. However, ranaviral infections have not been detected in captive or wild lizards in Australia. Oral-cloacal swabs were collected from 42 wild lizards from northern Queensland and 83 captive lizards from private collections held across three states/territories. Samples were tested for ranaviral DNA using a quantitative PCR assay. This assay detected ranaviral DNA in 30/83 (36.1%) captive and 33/42 (78.6%) wild lizard samples. This is the first time molecular evidence of ranavirus has been reported in Australian lizards