Tackling educational inequality - CentreForum

Tackling educational inequality
However, analysis of aggregate performance data of this kind is subject
to a variety of problems. The PISA data is itself subject to challenge
because of the selective participation or even non participation of some
countries (notably the UK). The data looks at countries on an aggregate
basis, rather than comparing school outcomes, and any relationship
between resources and student achievement might be distorted by other
cultural influences on performance.
A more nuanced picture emerges, specifically in relation to the UK,
from the 2005 DfES/HM Treasury report, ’Child poverty: fair funding for
schools’. The report examined the extent to which deprivation funding
could be used to bridge the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their
peers. The conclusions were compelling:
: While additional educational spending has a positive, if relatively
modest impact on overall pupil attainment, the impact of
the extra spending becomes increasingly important the higher
the level of deprivation.
: Overall, an increase in spending per pupil of £1,000 is associated
with 1.32 extra GCSE points. 34
: For the least deprived third of schools no statistically significant
relationship at all was found between resources and attainment.
However, for the most deprived third of schools, an increase of
£1,000 per pupil resulted in an extra 1.92 points at GCSE.
A second study, carried out for the education department by the Centre
for the Economics of Education (CEE) in 2005, supported these conclusions.
It found that the impact of a marginal increase in spending was
three times as great for maths and four times as great for science when
spent on FSM pupils.
Clearly the benefits from the extra spending will decline as spending
increases. However it is also evident from the research that while there
is little benefit to be expected from further increases in real term spending
on the most affluent third of pupils the benefits from extra spending
on the more deprived pupils have not yet been fully exploited. This
evidence argues for a greater variation of spending budgets between
schools according to the relative deprivation of their pupil intakes.
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