An international study
shows comprehensives can produce good results, reports Donald
Hirsch
It is a rare thing for an international study to provide
conclusive evidence on what education systems work best. So we
should all sit up and listen when such a study shows
unequivocally that comprehensive school systems have produced
narrower social differences than selective systems.
A recent analysis of the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development's (OECD) PISA survey of knowledge
and skills of 15-year-olds across industrialised countries has
come to this conclusion. More precisely, it looked at how
secondary schools "differentiate" students, such as the age at
which they are first divided into separate schools or
programmes, the number of such "tracks" and the extent to
which weaker students repeat grades. It found a pronounced
association between the extent of such differentiation and the
average gap in reading performance between students from more
and less privileged backgrounds, on an internationally
comparable scale.
The results show that the gap between the least and most
socially advantaged students at the end of schooling tends to
be wider than average in the countries that still divide
pupils early in secondary education. Nor is greater equality
in comprehensive schools achieved by levelling down. Countries
that divide students also have, on average, lower student
performance. Countries such as Finland, Japan and Korea all
have comprehensives: they combine high achievement with small
social differences. Others, such as Germany and Hungary, have
below-average performance and wide social differences. They
separate pupils at the start of secondary education.
Our own comprehensives have produced students who, overall,
have higher reading literacy than average for OECD countries.
However, social differences in performance in the UK remain
relatively high, as they do in the US, Australia and New
Zealand.
This does not mean that our comprehensives have high
inequalities. Ignoring the effect of class, the amount of
variation in student results is about average for the OECD -
pretty impressive progress when you consider our history of
dividing students.
However, those differences that persist are more closely
linked to social inequalities than in other comprehensive
systems such as Scandinavia's. British students from less
advantaged backgrounds are more likely to go to
worse-performing schools, and also underperform within each
school. Yet this should not lead us to conclude that our
comprehensives have failed. The PISA results show just how
wrong it is to assume that working-class children in countries
such as Germany are more likely to achieve their potential
because, if bright, they go to superior academic track-schools
or, if less academic, they thrive in a different kind of
school adapted to their needs.
PISA assessed whether, near the end of compulsory
education, students had the basic reading skills needed to do
well in adult life. The quarter of German students with the
least favourable social backgrounds were on average only just
proficient at level 2 on a five-level literacy scale: this was
the third worst result in 27 OECD countries - just below
Portugal. In the UK, the least-advantaged quarter had a very
respectable average score, just within level 3, which was the
average proficiency of all students in Germany.
In the face of such evidence, it would be hard to argue
that dividing students at an early age into programmes suited
to their needs is the way to reinvigorate our secondaries.
When the Government talks about specialisation and diversity,
might it be leading us back in this direction?
he idea that different schools should be able to develop
different specialisms and characters is intricately tied up
with the idea of choice. Otherwise, every family would end up
with the particular character of school that happened to exist
in their catchment area, even if they preferred something
quite different.
While choice may not necessarily increase social
segregation, the possibility is there. Here, there are further
lessons to be learned from abroad. In the Netherlands, for
example, many immigrant families opt for the least ambitious
of the four secondary-school types, because they are convinced
that they will feel more at home there.
UK parents have proved quite adept at this kind of social
clustering. In recent years this has been related to
geographic location and league-table performance rather than
specialism or ability-testing. The tables place schools in a
hierarchy, and prompt the cross-town school runs and moves to
different catchment areas more common among the middle
classes.
An important objective of giving schools different
characters should be to flatten this hierarchy, providing
equally esteemed choices, rather than to provide new signals
of which are the plum schools. This makes it important to move
quickly towards a system where each school is recognised as
having something special, rather than just those with special
status. Otherwise, the present policy risks providing
opportunities to some pupils, at the expense of those who most
need them.
Donald Hirsch is an international consultant on education
policy.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
