23 July 2003
The effect of schools on HE achievement
Eighteen year old entrants to full-time degree courses from state schools and colleges are more likely to get a good degree than similar students, with similar entry qualifications, from independent schools. This is the conclusion of a paper written by HEFCE's data analysts (HEFCE 2003/32).
John Thompson, who leads the data analysis team, explained: 'For some years we have been building a longitudinal database of student records, and linking data from a variety of sources, to enable us to carry out this kind of investigation.' Following an invitation to contribute to the Universities UK's 'Fair Enough' conference in January 2003, HEFCE brought forward its plans to investigate schooling effects on HE achievement.
Previous investigations had shown that students from independent schools seemed to do less well than those from state schools. HEFCE has been investigating this effect to find out whether it is genuine, or due to some other characteristics. Independent school students tend to go to certain universities; perhaps it is harder to get a good degree at these universities. Perhaps school performance, rather than type of school, affects HE achievement?
John Thompson further commented, 'When we started out we expected performance of the student within the school to be the key. A student getting, say, an A and two Bs from a school where that was the best in the year, seemed likely to have more potential than a student from a school where that was below average. Contrary to these expectations, we found that the school performance effect was small and inconsistent.'
The differential effect of 'school type', however, remained even after refining the models. 'We went close to the limits of what is currently possible in modelling techniques. There can never be complete certainly, but it now seems extremely unlikely that the lower HE achievement of independent school students can be explained away by some other factor.'
This paper is certainly not the last word on the subject. There are many possible strands of further enquiry. For example, it may be that the characteristics of the school attended at 16 give an indication of potential within HE. These data are currently unavailable, but the HEFCE data analysis team is exploring a number of ways of extracting and linking them from other sources.
The report 'Schooling effects on higher education achievement' (HEFCE 2003/32) is available on the HEFCE web-site.
Questions about this work should be e-mailed to Mark Gittoes (m.gittoes@hefce.ac.uk).