Percentile/SFO Comparison Charts

1. Percentile/SFO Comparison Charts Data and Evaluation Division Feb 2008

2. Purpose of presentation To explain to schools the replacement for the Like School Group approach, the Percentile/SFO Comparison Charts.

3. Topics • The Problem • The Previous Solution (LSGs) • Alternatives Considered • Percentile/SFO Comparison Charts

4. The Problem How does my school’s student achievement score compare to other schools, given that my school is “different” to the average school?

5. The Previous Solution - LSGs • “Like” school groups (LSG) commenced in 1996 • Created so schools could compare their performance to “similar schools” • 9 LSGs based on two measures; • EMA/Youth Allowance: proportion of students in school in receipt of EMA or Youth Allowance • LBOTE: proportion of students from a language background other than English

6. LSG chart • Good acceptance overall, but weaknesses are now apparent • Weaknesses include: • Schools close to a boundary (unfairly compared to all schools in LSG) • EMA/Youth Allowance data no longer available • LSGs are of unequal size (no. of schools in LSG4 is almost 10x that in LSG3)

7. Alternatives considered 1) Like School Sphere • For each school, compare results to performance of 19 nearest schools (in terms of SFO and maybe LBOTE, enrolment) • Gets extremely complicated statistically 2) Percentile/SFO Comparison Charts

8. Student Family Occupation (SFO) densities • Indicator of socio-economic status • SFO accounts for 38% of variance in student achievement • LBOTE only accounts for an additional 5% • Used in Student Resource Package • 4 years of SFO data (2004-2007)

10. 2005 SFOs for primary & pri/sec schoolssorted from highest to lowest socio-economic status (SES) Lowest SES 22nd percentile Highest SES Highest SES

11. 78% of schools have a student population from a higher socio-economic background 22% of schools have a student population from a lower socio-economic background Nameless Primary School

12. 2005 AIM Year 3 Reading mean scoressorted from lowest to highest score Lowest scoring school Highest scoring school

13. Nameless Primary School If socio-economic status, as measured by SFO, was the sole determinant of student achievement, you’d expect the school’s achievement percentile to be in the same vicinity as the SFO percentile. 20% of schools have a lower AIM score

14. 2005 SFOs for primary & pri/sec schools sorted from highest to lowest socio-economic status (SES) Lowest SES Highest SES Highest SES

15. Nameless Primary School The (up to) 20% of schools that are most like this school in terms of SFO.

16. Nameless Primary School

17. Literacy

18. Literacy

19. Numeracy

20. Student Absence

21. Staff Opinion Survey Parent Opinion Survey Student (Attitudes to School) Survey

22. Value-add? No • Not an attempt at value-add • Simply is what it is • If SFO was the sole determinant of student achievement, a school’s student achievement percentile would be within the “vicinity” of its SFO percentile. If it’s above (or below), the school could hypothesise why.

23. Percentile/SFO Comparison Charts Principles behind • Use Student Family Occupation (SFO) only as best predictor of student achievement • Examine student achievement and SFO percentiles together • Keep it simple • Use lots of data, over time, across strands (don’t rely on any one bit of data) • Combine the data with the school context to get the full story