How do you choose the best secondary school for your child? New Irish economic research has some interesting insights. One is that paying for a fee-paying school is not necessarily the best approach.Irish parents take an active approach to choosing a school, with many not choosing the closest school. But how what school will get the best from your child? Here are the key points.
1. The backdrop: An ESRI study in 2010 suggests that as many as half of Irish parents do not choose the secondary school they live closest to for their child or children to attend. Given that many live in rural areas and would have a limited choice, this suggests that a significant number who do have a choice choose to exercise it. The academic record of the school features in the choice but so do a host of other factors – ethos, sports facilities, where friends are going, whether the school is single sex or mixed, school discipline, supports for children who need them and so on. And affordability is also a factor for those considering private schools, many of which charge €4 ,000 to €6,000 a year for day pupils , with some significantly higher.
In total there are around 720 secondary schools in Ireland. The first choice for parents is which type of school they want for their child.Around half are voluntary secondary schools, generally denominational. About 46 per cent are vocational or community colleges, run by local boards. The rests are community and comprehensive schools. About 7 per cent are fee-paying.
2. The research: There has been a lot of international research on school effectiveness, though predictably it is a tricky enough area to measure. It is easy enough to look at exam results, of course, but how do you measure whether a school is getting the best – academically – out of the group of children in its classes.
Here, three researchers in the Maynooth University department of economics – Aedin Doris, Donal O'Neill and Olive Sweetman – have done some innovative research in a new working paper entitled " Good Schools or Good Students."
It is based on survey data collected by the Central Statistics Office for a survey entitled " Growing up in Ireland" , which tracks the development of a cohort of children born between November 1997 and October 1998. The study followed more than 8,500 children from primary into 627 secondary schools, collecting information from the children, their parents, their teachers and looking at their Junior Certificate results. As part of their first survey, aged 9, each child took a reading and maths test and information on so-called non-cognitive skills looking at socio-economic development and behaviour was also collected .
The idea here was to get a baseline to allow a judgement to be made on the “ value added” in terms of education by the secondary school. Children from wealthier backgrounds and without behaviour problems, for example, generally do better than less well off children or those with a poor discipline record. Family background is also a key factor, according to international research, for example children whose parents went to university tend to do better.
3. The results: As we know for the league tables of " feeder schools" into third-level education published here and elsewhere each year, looking at the raw figures, private, fee-paying schools tend to achieve better results and thus get a higher proportion of students into third-level. The same applies for Junior Cert results, according to the Maynooth research Looking at the raw data, the fee-paying schools do better.
The researchers then adjusted the results to try to get a measure of the “ value added “ in terms of education. In other words, taking into account where the students are starting from in terms of ability and background, which schools to best in terms of where they end up academically. Here, the research found much less variance than in the raw, unadjusted data which just looked at results by school. Some schools still showed up better, but not necessarily the ones that did well before the data was adjusted.
For the most part the schools who did worst in the unadjusted scores performed much less poorly in terms of “ value-added” for their student intake.The strong performance of top-ranking schools was much less evident, including fee-paying schools.
The better performing schools in terms of the raw results, in other words, tend to be those who take in the better students in the first place. In terms of getting the best outcome for the pupils they take on, the story is different – schools are much more alike in terms of performance than the raw scores suggest – and the rankings differ substantially.
And there is a lot of variation between different schools of the same type when this adjustment is done to take account of the pupils they are taking in. Some vocational schools are much better than others, and some fee-paying schools also exceed the performance of others significantly.
4. The reasons: So what factors determine how well schools do? We have already seen that fee-paying schools do well – but often because they take in the best students. Some fee-paying schools do continue to rank highly on measures of value added but the paper concludes that " fee-paying schools as a group perform no better than other second-level schools." In fact vocational schools as a group score best.
So what other factors come into play when measuring educational value added. Schools in high unemployment areas tend to do relatively poorly. Interestingly, school with female principals tend to do relatively well, perhaps, the researchers speculate, reflecting different leadership style.
However a notable factor is that many other variables – such as school size, single sex versus mixed and so on – have a limited impact. The magic sauce which makes some schools better than others is hard to identify. The researchers write that “ this may indicate that the factors determining value added are idiosyncratic school effects such as effective management which are difficult to measure”
5. What it means: Parents tend to favour schools on the basis of the raw exam results, as this is the clearest information they have. However this may not always be the "best" school for their child in terms of educational " value -added," in other words getting the best exam results possible.
The impact of identifying the best school can be substantial, the researchers find, though of course doing so is difficult and likely to be very specific to the child. For parents the clear message is that it is not all about the raw exam results.
It would be interesting to probe the wider reasons why parents choose one school over another and some choose to pay fees – the researchers identify possible reasons as being sports and other facilities, extra-curricular programmes , school ethos “ or... longer run benefits on education, employment and health.” Do pupils from some schools end up doing better after they leave education? Another interesting area for more research.
For public policy there are a few messages. Any wider information which can be made available to parents on school performance and management could be of value in helping them choose. Reassuringly, the finding that schools of different types have similar results in terms of educating pupils is reassuring. The system, in many cases, seems to be doing a good job for a range of pupils. Finally other societal factors remain important for educational performance – unemployment, family problems and so on – and policy can have an impact in these areas. The economic pay-back, for families, society and students themselves of getting the best education possible is immense.
