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The Education Reform Act 20 years on

Explore the key components, myths, and effects of the 1988 Education Reform Act. Delve into the importance of judging school quality accurately through value-added measures. Understand the impact of hyperaccountability on literacy, numeracy, and skill demands. Uncover the implications for student achievement and future prosperity.

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The Education Reform Act 20 years on

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  1. The Education Reform Act 20 years on Dylan Wiliam www.dylanwiliam.net

  2. Overview of presentation • The key components of the Education Reform Act • The two big myths about parental choice • The effects of “hyperaccountability” • Why this matters

  3. The 1988 Education Reform Act • An extremely coherent piece of legislation • Main assumption: markets are the best way to improve schools • To create a market, you need: • Choice: parental choice • Accountability: formula funding • Diversity: grant-maintained schools, local management • Standardization: national curriculum • Information: national tests at 7, 11, 14 and 16

  4. Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln… • The potentially positive features of ERA… • National curriculum (the idea, not the particular curriculum) • Local management of schools • Formula funding (again, the idea, not the current policy) • …have been largely negated by tragic shortcomings • The myth of parental choice… • …fuelled by misleading information

  5. How to judge school quality? • “There is always an easy solution to every human problem: • neat, plausible, and wrong.” (Mencken, 1917) • Raw outcome data • Useful when inputs are equal • Completely misleading when they are not (e.g., surgical survival rates)

  6. OECD

  7. Raw results vs. value-added • Examination success rates combine two effects • The quality of the teaching • The quality of the intake • The second dominates the first • Contextualized value-added (CVA) is by far the best measure of the contribution that a school has made to the achievement of its students

  8. Differences in CVA are often insignificant… Middle 50%: differences not significantly different from average (Wilson & Piebalga, 2008)

  9. …and are usually small • 7% of the variability in secondary school GCSE grades are attributable to the school • 93% of the variability in secondary school GCSE grades are nothing to do with the school • A student who gets eight grade Ds at an average school will get: • five Ds and three Cs at one of the best schools (1sd above mean CVA) • five Ds and three Es at one of the worst schools (1sd below mean CVA)

  10. …but some schools are amazingly good • Moreton Community School • %5A*-C 30% • CVA 1090 • A student who gets eight Ds at an average school will get seven Bs and a C here

  11. The effects of “hyperaccountability”

  12. Effects of test preparation

  13. Literacy Children receiving 1 2 3 years of the Literacy Strategy

  14. Numeracy Children receiving 1 2 3 years of the Numeracy Strategy

  15. Standards at key stage 2

  16. Standards at key stage 4

  17. Why does it matter?

  18. The changing demand for skills (USA) (Levy & Murnane, 2005)

  19. Conclusion • Attempts by successive governments to raise student achievement have • Produced only marginal improvements in student achievement… • …that are primarily in skills that are increasingly irrelevant in work… • …while performance on the skills that matter has declined… • …thus threatening our future prosperity… • …and alienating a generation of students.

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