Peter Mortimore

School Effectiveness and the Management of Effective Learning and Teaching

ABSTRACT Effective Schools research has focused thinking on effective learning as one of the major outcomes of schooling. Unfortunately, however, research findings on effective learning are limited because mental activity is covert and learning can only be inferred from subsequent responses. Integrating such concepts as ability, motivation, self‐efficacy and perseverance has also proved difficult. Even though teaching is an overt activity, the models that have been constructed fail to do justice to the complexity of its components. The respective roles of modelling, expectations, instruction and feedback, for instance, are not well understood. The School Effectiveness research, however, has identified a number of factors which operate at both the classroom and the whole‐school level and which provide guidance for practitioners on how effective learning may be promoted. This paper reviews these areas of research.

Comparison of Value Added Models for Secondary School Effectiveness

ABSTRACT The issue of value‐added measures of school effectiveness is reviewed in relation to the Governments requirement for schools to publish raw examination results. The study reports a series of multilevel analyses of the 1993 GCSE examination results in Lancashire employing a wide variety of pupil intake and school context variables as well as a range of 1991 Census measures attached to each schools catchment area and each pupils home area. The methodology involves evaluating and comparing the results of several different value‐added models controlling for different pupil and school background factors. The findings indicate that a substantial percentage of school level variation in pupil outcomes can be explained by pupil intake factors. In addition, comparisons between the different value‐added models indicate that when rich and wide‐ranging pupil level data (for example, prior attainment measures in different areas) are available and taken into account in the analysis, school‐context factors (s...

Differential Secondary School Effectiveness: comparing the performance of different pupil groups

Abstract This article reports the results of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded study which focuses on the differential academic achievement of different groups of pupils. The paper describes the findings on the size and extent of school effects across 3 years (1990, 1991, 1992) for different groups of pupils (classified by gender, eligibility for free school means [FSM], ethnic group and by prior attainment). Pupils’ overall General Certificate of Secondary Education performance and their performance in selected subjects (English, English literature, French, history, mathematics and science) have been analysed using multilevel modelling, employing a total sample of 94 inner London secondary schools. A ‘value added’ approach is adopted, controlling for selected student background measures of prior attainment (at secondary transfer), gender, age, ethnicity and low income to provide statistical controls for differences between schools in the characteristics of their intakes. Differential ...

The Effects of School Membership on Pupils' Educational Outcomes.

Abstract The article reports some of the major findings of a large‐scale longitudinal study of the progress and development of an age cohort of pupils during the junior years of education. The pupils attended a stratified random sample of 50 Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) primary schools during the period 1980‐84. The focus of the paper is an investigation of the existence and size of the effects of school membership upon these pupils’ progress in a variety of cognitive outcomes (reading, writing and mathematics), attainment in oracy (which was measured only on one occasion), and upon several non‐cognitive outcomes (attendance, attitudes, behaviour and self‐concept). Particular attention is paid to the identification and separation of the effects of school membership from those attributable to background factors, sex and age. For the analysis of the effects of school upon pupils’ progress in cognitive areas, initial attainment in the relevant area is controlled and acts as the baseline against wh...

Understanding Differences in Academic Effectiveness: Practitioners’ Views∗

ABSTRACT As part of a large‐scale study of the ability of 94 secondary schools to promote academic achievement, case studies of six outlier schools were conducted and headteachers (principals) and their deputies were questioned about the processes of effectiveness. The analysis of their responses ‐ grouped by the performance of their school (measured by value added analyses of three years of public examination results) as effective, ineffective or mixed ‐ reveals considerable support for previously cited characteristics of effective schooling. Despite the limitations imposed by a reliance on the use of retrospective accounts, the study takes forward the field of school effectiveness in its search for generalisable findings and coherent theory.

The Vital Hours: Reflecting on Research on Schools and their Effects

Twenty one years ago — in 1975 — I went to work with the now famous child psychiatrist Professor Sir Michael Rutter and with Dr Barbara Maughan and Dr Janet Ouston on a new study of secondary schools being planned for later that year . The study was published in 1979 by Open Books in the United Kingdom and Harvard Press in the United States under the title Fifteen Thousand Hours: Secondary Schools and their Effects on Children (Rutter et al., 1979a).

Schools as Institutions

Summary Six studies of schools are reviewed and their findings discussed in relation to a proposed research model of schools as social institutions. It is argued that the results confirm differences in achievement, atmosphere and ethos. The effects on the pupils of such differences are then discussed and it is concluded that some schools appear to protect their pupils from delinquency, in addition to securing academic success. Some reasons for these different outcomes are suggested, and a research strategy, to identify the possible processes involved, is put forward.