"Research shows that pupils benefit from having a level of scrutiny of their teachers. In our research, we found the decision in 2001 by the Welsh assembly to stop the publication of secondary school performance data or "league tables" resulted in a significant deterioration in GCSE performance in Wales.
The effect was sizeable and statistically significant. It amounted to around two GCSE grades per pupil per year - that is, achieving a grade D rather than a B in one subject. Pupils in England and Wales were performing very similarly up to 2001, but thereafter the fraction gaining five good GCSE passes strongly diverged."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20628795
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It would be interesting to see some other measures and statistics. The underlying question is whether the pupils', sorry students', education has got better or worse in terms of its relevance and usefulness.
I wonder for example how the changes affected the subjects studied - you have to assume that students are steered towards "easier" subjects when what counts is the number of C grades. Also the number subject entries and the effect on selection procedures both by pupils and schools.
Nevertheless it's something that needs explaining, since presumably the Welsh students still have the benefit of grade inflation in marking.
I've spent a lot of time over the years on various kinds of performance measurement and evaluation. The system whereby the same measure is used both to rank pupils and measure the effectiveness of their teachers is fundamentally flawed.
The 'old' system of allocating a percentage of candidates to each grade had much to be said for it. What it didn't do of course was give an objective measure of teachers' effectiveness, which has been the obsession for the last 20+ years.
Supposedly we now have a measure of that, but nobody really believes it, because twice as many students now get the equivalent of a Maths and English 'O' level, and about half as many can actually add up and spell :-(
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The original report is here:
www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/bulletin/summer11/burgess.pdf
As it dates back to 2010 it's not clear why BBC have landed on it now.
Comparing Welsh schools with English 'equivalents' shows a divergence since league tables were abolished in Wales. Welsh schools getting fewer 5A*-C passes.
Correlation is not causation.
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A few possible causes, and of course the Tories will says it's because Welsh standards have fallen.
However, removing league tables mean schools don't aim to perform well on the tables - this means that they are more likely to let dummies sit O-levels they'll 'do badly' in, rather than the pressure on them not to let them sit exams and bring the average down.
Give managers a target and often they will do everything to skew the results to their advantage.
See also hospital trusts, etc.
GPs have far more targets than ever before and guess what... we'll likely allocate more resources to attaining the targets than untargeted stuff.
Does it make a difference to outcomes? Who knows - you can make up any answer you want with statistics.
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Correlation is not causation.
Agreed.
The likely causes :
the Welsh pupils are either more stupid, worse taught or just plain lazy.
take your pick.
Remember it's GCSE results .
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>>
>> Correlation is not causation.
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> The likely causes :
>> the Welsh pupils are either more stupid, worse taught or just plain lazy.
>>
>> take your pick.
Or, as posited above, the cohorts are different because league tables discourage English schools from entering less able candidates for fear of table position being affected.
Or that the 'experiment' is badly constructed and the comparable schools in England were no such thing. The PISA scores do however provide some cross refernce or validation.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Thu 24 Jan 13 at 15:10
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I have just had a look at Bromp's link above.
On the face of it, Wales has definitely got comparatively worse on the GCSE benchmark though it's not stated exactly how that is calculated and whether, for example, it would be diluted by more speculative exam entries. It's also interesting that the Welsh performance on the same benchmark has actually improved a lot from 2004-2008, from about 52% to 59% and the rate of improvement has increased - though not as much as in England.
If you were cynical you would say that even the Welsh 'improvement' looks a bit sus, and the English improvement from 54% to 66% is just not credible
However, the real shocker is Figure 1, the "PISA"** scores in Maths, Reading & Science. Whilst Wales is again again performing worse than England, if I interpret the charts correctly the students' actual performance in these disciplines seems to have gone down while their exam results were improving.
Unfortunately the article doesn't provide enough detail but if that's true then it really only goes to show that education has "improved" in inverse relationship with exam results. Yet no comment on that at all.
What have I missed?
**"The PISA (Programme for International
Student Assessment) results derive from a
standardised international assessment of 15
year olds, run by the OECD"
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When I see teachers who can't do arithmetic or spell, I need no further evidence.
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What on earth has that got to do with league tables?
Go back to the DM.
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Wales have this banding thing. The Minister of Education has a certain view of the world - which I suppose makes some sort of sense form his perspective. Not a nice man by any measure and fits into the stereotype of your average AM.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20779660
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School league tables do work... - Manatee
