School effectiveness studies using administrative data

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Abstract
This paper presents results of a study of the effectiveness of schools in teaching reading. Some 2,500 pupils in primary schools were given a standard test at ages six and eight, and their progress compared over the period. A number of other school‐level and pupil‐level variables were collected and sieved to see which had a relation with reading progress. After allowing for the measures found to be effective in the preliminary sieving process using multilevel modelling, the measure of school effectiveness thus formed was compared with raw mean scores for schools, and substantial differences were found between the two rankings. The method used gives a fairer comparison of effectiveness between schools than does comparison of the raw mean results, and may be a particularly attractive proposition since it uses data already available from administrative sources.

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