This paper considers the contextualised value-added scores of all secondary schools in one LEA in England over five years. It shows that only 2 out of 30 schools had a consistent run of either positive or negative value-added scores, and that this number is no more than would be expected by chance even if the scores were meaningless. Value-added…

The classification by many scholars of numerical research processes as quantitative and other research techniques as qualitative has prompted the construction of a third category, that of "mixed methods", to describe studies that use elements from both processes. Such labels might be helpful in structuring our understanding of phenomena. But they…

This paper considers the views of young people aged 14-16 about their future education, training and occupation. It is based on a study of around 3000 year 11 pupils in 45 educational settings in England during 2007/2008, supplemented by documentary analysis, official statistics, and interviews and surveys with staff and parents. Pupil-reported…

This paper considers the pupil intakes to Academies in England, and their attainment, based on a re-analysis of figures from the Annual Schools Census 1989-2012, the Department for Education School Performance Tables 2004-2012 and the National Pupil Database. It looks at the national picture, and the situation for Local Education Authorities, and…

This paper revisits the use of effect sizes in the analysis of experimental and similar results, and reminds readers of the relative advantages of the mean absolute deviation as a measure of variation, as opposed to the more complex standard deviation. The mean absolute deviation is easier to use and understand, and more tolerant of extreme…

Experimental designs involving the randomization of cases to treatment and control groups are powerful and under-used in many areas of social science and social policy. This paper reminds readers of the pre-and post-test, and the post-test only, designs, before explaining briefly how measurement errors propagate according to error theory. The…

There is widespread international concern that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and some ethnic minorities are less likely to continue education or training after compulsory schooling, or are less likely to follow the highest-status and prestigious routes. Based on work done in the UK, this paper presents the results of a systematic…

Previous international work has shown that clustering pupils with similar characteristics in particular schools yields no clear academic benefit, and can be disadvantageous both socially and personally. Understanding how and why this clustering happens, and how it may be reduced, is therefore important for policy. Yet previous work has tended to…

The aim of the article is to identify those factors that drive the high participation in immediate post-16 and higher education of some minority ethnic groups in the UK. What could we learn from these examples to encourage higher aspirations more generally? The article reports a summary of a formal and systematic review of 1678 studies dated 1997…

This article describes part of the findings of a study requested by the (then) Teacher Training Agency (TTA) into the factors that support high quality initial teacher training (ITT) provision in England. The study had two chief aims. The first was to characterise successful trainees in terms of data already known about them using a dataset of all…

The author previously published a paper discussing how to conduct an analysis based on a cluster sample. In that paper, the author outlined several widely adopted alternative approaches, and pointed out that such approaches are anyway not needed for population figures, and not possible for non-probability samples. Thus, the author queried the…

Explores cause-effect models and their role in educational research, reviewing various kinds of causal models. Concludes that cause-effect provides a powerful, persuasive, and nearly universal explanation for social and psychological processes despite the inability to detect it directly. (SLD)

In the UK, as in several developed countries, concern has been expressed by interested commentators about the apparent decline of post-16 participation in the "hard" sciences (especially physics and chemistry). While formal full-time participation in 16-19 education and higher education has increased since the 1990s, both the relative and absolute…

This paper presents an argument against the wider adoption of complex forms of data analysis, using multi-level modeling (MLM) as an extended case study. MLM was devised to overcome some deficiencies in existing datasets, such as the bias caused by clustering. The paper suggests that MLM has an unclear theoretical and empirical basis, has not led…

This article started as a debate between the two authors. Both authors present a series of propositions about quality standards in education research. Cook's propositions, as might be expected, not only concern the importance of experimental trials for establishing the security of causal evidence, but also include some important practical and…