Robert Cassen, Sandra McNally and Anna Vignoles write that, as regards reducing the social gap, there is evidence that points to good potential in redirecting educational spending. They also argue for introducing fewer policy initiatives into the education system without proper evaluation

Cassen, Robert

McNally, Sandra

Vignoles, Anna

LSE Research Online

6/1/2015Making a difference in education: What the evidence saysblogs.lse.ac.uk /politicsandpolicy/making-a-difference-in-education-what-the-evidence-says/Robert Cassen, Sandra McNally and Anna Vignoles write that, as regards reducing the social gap, thereis evidence that points to good potential in redirecting educational spending. They also argue forintroducing fewer policy initiatives into the education system without proper evaluation.A new Conservative government has taken office in the UK since our book, Making a Difference inEducation, came out. We have surveyed the evidence about what is effective in British education,and wonder whether forthcoming policy will be guided by the evidence more than it has often beenin the past. The government has said it will be for ‘One Nation’ – surely that means they will seek toclose the social gap in our schools, the impact of family background on educational outcomes?If they really want to do that, the evidence indicates what the key priorities are: better quality earlyyears care, more support for reading and numeracy, and improving the quality of teaching. Thesethings cost money. But equally there is little evidence that some of the things that governments tendto spend their money on narrow the social gap. For example, governments of all persuasions tendto focus overly on school reform. This can be costly and may not help the disadvantaged. Forexample, as we note below, there is no good evidence that Free Schools will necessarily narrowthe socioeconomic gap in pupil achievement. One of Cameron’s last pledges during the electioncampaign was to build 500 more Free Schools. This has little evidence to back it.‘It’s political,’ might be the rejoinder. It certainly is. There is a real political choice to be made; youcan help disadvantaged children and families in ways that we know are effective, and as far aseducation is concerned we know quite a lot about how to do that. Or you can bypass the evidence.In more detail, early interventions can be valuable in helping children overcome the effects of adisadvantaged background – but they have to be of high quality and are likely to be expensive. The book also lists anumber of effective parenting programmes that provide value for money and can help improve educationaloutcomes. Parental involvement with schools can also be effective, and is relatively inexpensive.Research shows that poor reading can be brought down to 1 or 1.5 per cent of a year group, not 10 per cent as it isnow. On average each secondary school takes in around eighteen 11-year-olds who can’t read properly, half of themwith a reading age of 7. Struggling readers commonly need individual support in primary school, which can be costly– but the costs of not learning to read considerably outweigh whatever needs to be spent to bring reading up tostandard. We know what to do, and the pupil premium may be helping some schools do more, but overall we are stillnot doing it as consistently as we should. Similarly with numeracy: mathematical ability can be improved with theright kind of intervention, though more research would be helpful, especially long-run evaluations that would assessparticular teaching approaches.Perhaps the greatest mileage in educational investment, after the early years, lies in raising teacher quality. This ispartly a matter of initial teacher education, and partly that of improving the teaching of the existing work force byContinuing Professional Development, or CPD. Yet we do not know in terms of teaching quality and studentoutcomes which type of training is best, the university-based route or the more school-based route known as SchoolDirect. The latter was given a big impetus in recent years, without any supporting evidence. On CPD, the research ispretty good, but practice is fragmentary and best practice not universally well pursued.Research suggests that who teaches you matters much more than what school you go to. Yet a major proportion ofeducational spending has gone on fostering Academies and Free Schools. The Academies formed up to 2008-9have been evaluated, and found to have positive results; but improved outcomes were mostly confined to better-1/2achieving students, with little or no benefit to the lowest achieving. At the time of writing, there was no comparableresearch on Academies founded after that, though an Ofsted survey of 2012-13 found half those inspected ‘requiringimprovement’ or ‘inadequate’. There has been little research on Free Schools or primary Academies, though DfEdata do not show them to be providing more progress than local authority primaries. Research on their equivalentsin Sweden finds only small positive effects.Altogether, as regards reducing the social gap, there is evidence that points to good potential in redirectingeducational spending. But we would also plead for introducing fewer policy initiatives into the education systemwithout proper evaluation of their cost (not least in terms of teachers’ time) and their impact.For more, see Making a Difference in Education: What the evidence says, by Robert Cassen, SandraMcNally and Anna Vignoles.Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog, nor of theLondon School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting.About the AuthorsRobert Cassen is Emeritus Professor in LSE’s Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion.  Sandra McNally is Director of the Education and Skills Programme in LSE’s Centre for EconomicPerformance and Professor of Economics, University of Surrey. Anna Vignoles is Professor in the Department of Education, University of Cambridge.2/2

Making a difference in education: What the evidence says

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

LSE Research Online