Policies designed to improve student performance should focus on individual students in need of assistance rather than the schools they attend, argues a research paper published in the international journal School Effectiveness and School Improvement.

Author and ACER Principal Research Fellow, Dr Gary Marks, says school-focused policies are unlikely to improve the performance of low-achieving students because most of the variation in student performance is within schools, rather than between schools.

Marks said policy makers traditionally tend to focus on improving student outcomes in low-socioeconomic status and disadvantaged schools, both of which are often viewed as synonymous with low-achieving schools. However, Marks’ research shows that a school’s socioeconomic status has little impact on student performance once student’s individual characteristics are taken into account.

“This is largely due to the fact that low-achieving students are not just found in a small number of schools with particular characteristics, but are found in almost all schools” Dr Marks said.

In order to reach his conclusions, Marks analysed longitudinal data from the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study to identify school-level effects on the tertiary entrance performance of over 4000 Australian students.  School-level effects examined include the socioeconomic context the school is located within, academic context, school resources, school climate and teacher efficacy.

The analysis found that students’ tertiary entrance performance is influenced more by its academic context, rather than  its socioeconomic level.

“Students’ ENTER scores are boosted in schools with strong academic environments and weakened by schools with weak academic environments,” Dr Marks said.

School materials and educational resources had no significant effects on tertiary entrance scores. However, teacher shortages in particular subject areas did result in slightly lower average ENTER scores for students.

Of the school climate measures, only ‘Academic Press’ – the extent to which schools pressure their students to perform at a higher level, through, for example, higher academic expectations, more homework and a more demanding syllabus – had a significant impact.  The other measures of school climate (attitudes to school, student morale, student behaviour, and disciplinary climate) had small and not statistically significant effects on tertiary entrance performance.

“Schools improved their students’ tertiary entrance performance above that expected by students’ individual characteristics and other school effects when students were eager to learn, made good progress, worked hard and were well behaved,” said Marks.

School-level teacher efficacy, or the ability of teachers to teach effectively, had a positive although moderate effect on tertiary entrance results.  This suggests that schools have higher levels of student performance when the teachers are viewed by students as knowing their subject well, being well prepared and organized, good communicators, and good at maintaining interest and enforcing discipline.

Marks’ research also takes into account student-level influences of tertiary entrance performance.  His paper examines the effects of demographic factors, student socioeconomic background, prior achievement and student attitudes, and investigates how much of the variation in student and school performance these factors account for.

The analysis found that students’ prior academic achievement, as measured by PISA test score, has a much stronger impact on tertiary entrance performance than economic, social, and cultural status.  There were no significant differences according to language background or family type; however students living in regional areas were slightly disadvantaged in the competition for tertiary entrance places.  Girls experienced slightly larger performance gains than boys during the final years of secondary school.

Unsurprisingly, more positive attitudes to school were associated with higher ENTER scores, as was a strong disciplinary climate.

“These analyses indicate that school factors do not have a decisive role in influencing student performance,” said Marks.

Marks said that, instead, low achieving students would benefit from being placed in a more academic environment, while all schools would benefit from better teachers.

The full article, ‘What aspects of schooling are important? School effects on tertiary entrance performance’, was published by the international journal School Effectiveness and School Improvement in April 2010 and is available to download from http://works.bepress.com/gary_marks/70/

« Back to eNews