Developing Models of Educational Accountability

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Abstract
The paper adopts an inter‐disciplinary approach to the development of models of educational accountability. It combines educational, statistical and economic considerations in seeking to clarify the role, and scope for improvement, of quantitative models in assessing the educational performance of schools and local education authorities. By including expenditure in the analysis alongside socio‐economic characteristics, questions of both educational and economic effectiveness can be examined within a common framework that explicitly recognises the trade‐offs involved. The paper argues that the widely used existing quantitative technique of regression analysis has numerous deficiencies in this context. A promising alternative method, that of data envelopment analysis, is examined and compared with the results of regression analysis, in assessing LEA performance. The results are found to diverge in significant quantitative and qualitative ways. The paper stresses the importance of developing the interface between quantitative models and qualitative assessments by, for example, HMI and educational advisers, in which neither are alone sufficient to handle all of the complex questions that educational performance assessment and enhanced educational accountability raise.