Slants on Slopes: Using Multi‐level Models to Investigate Differential School Effectiveness and its Impact on Pupils’ Examination Results

Abstract

Does the influence on academic progress, which a school exerts on its pupils’ achievements in public examinations, differ for pupils of differing levels of ability? The study on which this paper is based used data from a number of English local education authorities (LEAs) and showed that, in general, when finely‐differentiated measures of pupils’ prior‐attainment were employed, the rate of progress was uniform for most schools within the differing sets for which data were available, whilst the level varied substantially between schools. The analysis contrasts these findings with others where a grouped prior‐attainment measure was used, and evidence for ‘differential effectiveness’ was detected; the paper seeks to account for the substantially different conclusions to which the work leads.