Analysis of Academy School Performance in the 2011 and 2012 GCSEs

The Local Government Association (LGA) commissioned NFER to undertake statistical analysis of school level GCSE data provided by the Department of Education and accessible from their website. The purpose of the analysis was to determine whether there was any differential progress between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4 that can be associated with schools status. This report highlights analysis undertaken on the 2011 and 2012 GCSE results with future analysis on the 2013 and 2014 results also planned. Additional analyses looking at changes over time were also carried out.Analysis at the school level used average attainment at Key Stage 2 as measure of prior attainment and as a way to control for schools having different pupil intakes. Pupil progress was measured between KS2 and average GCSE points score. Two measures of GCSE attainment were used, average total point score (capped) and the proportion of pupil achievbing 5+ A* to C grades. Other school level factors that may have been associated with a variation in pupil progress were also included within the models. These included the proportion of pupils on free school meals and the proportion of pupils with special educational needs, as well as geographical location.Key Findings:In 2011 and 2012 schools with academy status made, on average, more progress between KS2 and GCSE than non academy status schools.Peformance, and interpretation, altered when excluding equivalent qualifications.There was no long term change in performance associated with academy status

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in education research –methodological debates, questions, challenges

This Special Issue of Educational Research shines a spotlight on a key research design in the 21st Century in the field of education research: the randomised controlled trial (RCT) or ‘true’ experiment. The six papers included here explore the history and future of the design. They focus on challenges and opportunities, methodological developments and innovation, but above all they highlight the immense progress that has been made in rigorous evaluation over the last 60 years. They provide a historical background in the United States of America (USA), in Scandinavia and in the United Kingdom (UK), and cover the aspects of politics and methodology that have shaped the recent education science landscape. In a time when answers are sought to questions of efficacy and effectiveness of education policies and practices, RCTs have a special role. Uniquely among research designs, they are able to obtain unbiased estimates of the average effects of these policies and practices on children and young people’s education and wider outcomes. Furthermore, they serve as a useful introduction to contemporary issues in RCTs for any education researcher who has an interest in them, but may have felt hindered by limited technical knowledge

Barriers to participation in education and training

This study explores the barriers and constraints young people currently face when deciding what to do at the end of their compulsory schooling in Year 11. The study conducted by the NFER, working in partnership with Triangle and QA Research, included a survey of 2029 young people who completed Year 11 in either 2008 or 2009 conducted between August and October 2009. This survey was supplemented by interviews with booster samples of 519 young people across specific sub-groups and 102 parent interviews

The Double Club Evaluation : Research Report

Double Club (DC) is an in-school extension of the Playing for Success (PfS) programme, working with underachieving pupils in Key Stage 3 to improve attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy. It provides an innovative ‘double experience’ that combines classroom education with coaching in football or another sport. Young people attend at least twice a week in groups of approximately 15. The main aims of this evaluation were to assess the effectiveness of the Double Club programme, to identify good practice and to provide evidence on how best to operationalise DCs in a wider roll out. The first strand of the evaluation presented findings from case-study visits to five DCs. Four of these DCs were selected as examples of ‘good practice’ (all of which were football-related) and the fifth was selected as an example of a DC which based its activities on a sport other then football. The second strand of the evaluation provided an analysis of the impact of DC on pupil attainment, comparing the KS3 attainment of young people who had attended DC with the KS3 attainment of similar young people who had not attended, using a form of statistical analysis called multi-level modelling

SenseMaker: Co-creating Sensors for Journalism

SenseMaker started with a simple question: what happens when journalists, engineers and communities come together to design and build sensors for storytelling? The project was underpinned by the desire to create new ‘sensing’ devices. These sensors would have a tangible benefit for journalists and storytellers who seek to capture data to reveal, drive or enhance stories in their communities. The core enquiry sought to understand how open collaborations, centred on research and development, can create new editorial opportunities, particularly when data, sensors and narratives combine. In short, the core to SenseMaker was: • To co-design journalism sensors • To use them to create, prompt, underpin and develop content • To provoke, prompt or challenge public debate Partners included the Media Innovation Studio and Engineering Innovation Centre teams at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and Reach PLC, specifically with the involvement of the Manchester Evening News (MEN). This is our final project report

Search for CP violation in D+→K−K+π+D^{+} \to K^{-}K^{+}\pi^{+} decays

A model-independent search for direct CP violation in the Cabibbo suppressed decay $D^+ \to K^- K^+\pi^+$ in a sample of approximately 370,000 decays is carried out. The data were collected by the LHCb experiment in 2010 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 35 pb$^{-1}$. The normalized Dalitz plot distributions for $D^+$ and $D^-$ are compared using four different binning schemes that are sensitive to different manifestations of CP violation. No evidence for CP asymmetry is found.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

First observation of the decay Bˉs0→D0K∗0\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0} and a measurement of the ratio of branching fractions B(Bˉs0→D0K∗0)B(Bˉ0→D0ρ0)\frac{{\cal B}(\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0})}{{\cal B}(\bar{B}^0 \to D^0 \rho^0)}

The first observation of the decay $\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0}$ using $pp$ data collected by the LHCb detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb$^{-1}$, is reported. A signal of $34.4 \pm 6.8$ events is obtained and the absence of signal is rejected with a statistical significance of more than nine standard deviations. The $\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0}$ branching fraction is measured relative to that of $\bar{B}^0 \to D^0 \rho^0$: $\frac{{\cal B}(\bar{B}^0_s \to D^0 K^{*0})}{{\cal B}(\bar{B}^0 \to D^0 \rho^0)} = 1.48 \pm 0.34 \pm 0.15 \pm 0.12$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third is due to the uncertainty on the ratio of the $B^0$ and $B^0_s$ hadronisation fractions.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett. B; ISSN 0370-269

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal