Comprehensive versus Selective Schooling in England in Wales: What Do We Know?

(2006) - Jorn-Steffan Pischke, Alan Manning

Journal:
Link::
DOI:: 10.3386/w12176
Links::
Tags:: #paper #SchoolType #Attainment #NCDS
Cite Key:: [@pischkeComprehensiveSelectiveSchooling2006]

Abstract

British secondary schools moved from a system of extensive and early selection and tracking in secondary schools to one with comprehensive schools during the 1960s and 70s. Before the reform, students would take an exam at age eleven, which determined whether they would attend an academically oriented grammar school or a lower level secondary school. The reform proceeded at an uneven pace in different areas, so that both secondary school systems coexist during the 1960s and 70s. The British transition therefore provides an excellent laboratory for the study of the impact of a comprehensive versus a selective school system on student achievement. Previous studies analyzing this transition have typically used a value-added methodology: they compare outcomes for students passing through either type of school controlling for achievement levels at the time of entering secondary education. While this seems like a reasonable research design, we demonstrate that it is unlikely to successfully eliminate selection effects in who attends what type of school. Very similar results are obtained by looking at the effect of secondary school environment on achievement at age 11 and controlling for age 7 achievement. Since children only enter secondary school at age 11, these effects are likely due to selection bias. Careful choice of treatment and control areas, and using political control of the county as an instrument for early implementation of the comprehensive regime do not solve this problem.

Notes

“British secondary schools moved from a system of extensive and early selection and tracking in secondary schools to one with comprehensive schools during the 1960s and 70s. Before the reform, students would take an exam at age eleven, which determined whether they would attend an academically oriented grammar school or a lower level secondary scho” (Pischke and Manning, 2006)

“The British transition therefore provides an excellent laboratory for the study of the impact of a comprehensive versus a selective school system on student achievement. Pr” (Pischke and Manning, 2006)

“ritish schools moved from a system of extensive tracking to one with comprehensive schools in the 1960s and 70s” (Pischke and Manning, 2006, p. 1)

“In 1965, the central government asked the Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to draw up plans to switch to a comprehensive system. The implementation proceeded slowly, with faster growing, more Labour leaning LEAs moving to comprehensive schools more quickly, while those without expanding numbers of students, and more Conservative leaning Authorities implemented the change more slowly.” (Pischke and Manning, 2006, p. 1)

“The sample members entered secondary school in 1969, at a time when some LEAs in Britain had started to provide comprehensive schools already, while others continued to offer the traditional selective schools” (Pischke and Manning, 2006, p. 1)

“About 25 percent of students would attend grammars, with the remainder attending less challenging secondary modern schools. While this was the consensus model, education policy making in Britain was always rather decentralized, with the local educational authorities (LEAs) being the main administrative units, which retained a lot of decision making power about the exact make-up of the local school system. The 1944 Education Act only prescribed separate secondary schools and a transfer at age 11 leaving open the possibility for LEAs to experiment with other schemes, including comprehensive schools.” (Pischke and Manning, 2006, p. 4)

“Only in 1963 had the Labour Party fully embraced the comprehensive principle at the national level and called for the end of selection at their party conference. When Labour came to power in 1964, its goal was to accelerate the existing trend for comprehensive reorganization, which was well underway at the local level” (Pischke and Manning, 2006, p. 5)

“Scotland transformed to a comprehensive system more quickly, and without much local discretion. Nevertheless, Scotland is not particularly useful as a comparison group because it has a very different educational system from England and Wales with its own school leaving exams and university system (undergraduate degrees taking 4 years compared to 3 in England). Northern Ireland kept the selective system during this period but it is not included in the NCDS, and also differs sufficiently from the rest of the UK to make a comparison difficult.” (Pischke and Manning, 2006, p. 6)

“he NCDS distinguishes 164 LEAs in 1969. According to our classification there are 26 comprehensive and 29 selective LEAs with observations in the sample, while 109 LEAs are not used. A list is given in appendix table 3.” (Pischke and Manning, 2006, p. 11)

“Throughout the analysis, we have found rather similar patterns of results for the age 16 test scores and for the age 11 test scores. We conclude from this that it is prudent to be cautious about interpreting the age 16 results causally.” (Pischke and Manning, 2006, p. 18)