Programme full

Thursday 16 April 2014 13:30 - 15:00
PAPER SESSION 5
‘Faith of Our Fathers’: A Case Study of Polish Migrants’ Secondary School Choice in London and Nottingham
Thatcher, J.
(University of East London)
Since the early nineteenth century, the church has been involved in education provision in the UK. Following mass
Irish migration in the mid-nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church built a network of Catholic schools providing
education to Catholic children. The Roman Catholic Church has the largest proportion of faith secondary schools in
England. Research has found that faith schools are often chosen for quality, not religion, and debate has centred on
the socio-economic status of Catholic schools' admissions. The 'abuse' of faith schools admission policies has been
cited as increasing segregation with middle-class parents accused of 'playing the system'. It also has been suggested
that the points-based admissions system benefits white middle-class areas and is an obstacle to immigrant children in
those communities. But is this still the case given the inflow and settlement of Polish Catholic migrants since EU
accession in 2004? Drawing on in-depth interviews with Polish parents choosing secondary schools for their children
in London and Nottingham, this paper examines whether Polish migrants' education choices are shaped by their
devotion to Catholicism, seeing Catholic schools as fundamental in supporting their cultural identity and values. It also
explores Polish parents interaction with two localised education markets by opening up questions on what happens
when these parents are faced with a situation in choosing between a higher-ranking state/selective school and a
Catholic secondary school? This comes at a time when increasing strain on places at 'good' schools intensify the
debate over whether faith schools should be state-funded.
Out-of-school-time Programmes: An Evaluation of Their Effectiveness Using the Longitudinal Study of Young
People in England (LSYPE)
Pensiero, N., Green, F.
(Institute of Education, University of London)
The proposed paper aims at estimating the effect of out-of-school-time (OST) programmes on GCSE performance in
England. OST programmes refer to any form of activity in which the children are involved under the supervision of
adults outside the normal school timetable. The focus on programmes that are linked to the academic curriculum as
previous research has suggested these are the most beneficial for academic achievement. Since the beginning of
2000s the implementation of some forms of OST programmes has become almost universal among secondary
schools, but there has not yet been a large scale investigation of the effectiveness of these programmes. This project
makes use of the longitudinal study of young people in England (LSYPE, 1990 cohort) to estimate the effectiveness of
OST programmes in England. It aims at linking the change in academic performance between age 14 (KS3) and 16
(GCSE) to participation in OST programmes in LSYPE members, taking into account individual, social background
and school characteristics and using appropriate techniques to deal with the issue of selection into the programme
and school unmeasured effects. It shows that OST programmes are effective in enhancing the GCSE achievement
and that they can function as a means of social mobility as they are especially beneficial for the children from parents
who are unemployed or work in a routine occupation.
Opening the Black Box of Educational Choices: What iIs the Role of Teachers and Secondary Schools on
Students’ Educational Decisions?
Tarabini, A., Curran, M.
(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
The aim of the communication is to analyse young's people educational expectations, strategies and choices at the
end of secondary compulsory schooling. Specifically the object of study is based on students that, according to their
educational trajectory, are at risk of dropping out school. The focus of the analysis is to observe how these
educational experiences and decisions are mediated by the institutional habitus (Reay, et al 2001), the management
of students' heterogeneity (Dupriez, et al 2008) and the teacher expectations (Van Houtte, 2011). In order to conduct
the analysis we developed a qualitative research in four public secondary schools (in Barcelona-Spain), selected
according to their diversity in terms of their social composition and their logics of managing pupils' heterogeneity. In
each school we developed interviews with teachers, principals, academic coordinators and other relevant
professionals and with students from the two last years of compulsory secondary schooling. We also conducted focus
group with teachers and students, class observations and participation in teachers' meetings. The expected results
are oriented to open the 'black box' of students' choices, aiming at identifying what is behind their decisions and how
different institutional settings and school actors may influence them.
BSA Annual Conference 2015 190
Glasgow Caledonian University