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7 th June 2012 Is it better to fail than to succeed? A quantitative analysis of ‘just’ failing an English school inspection Rebecca Allen, Institute of Education, University of London
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Research questions What is the best policy for dealing with under-performing schools? What happens to schools that are judged unsatisfactory by Ofsted (between 2002 and 2009)? In principle, the effects of failing an Ofsted inspection could go either way: inducement to focus on academic performance spiral of decline
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The policy treatment We compare those who ‘just’ fail and are given a notice to improve with those judged as satisfactory “the school requires significant improvement because either: it is failing to provide an acceptable standard of education, but is demonstrating the capacity to improve; or it is not failing to provide an acceptable standard of education but is performing significantly less well in all the circumstances reasonably be expected to perform” (Ofsted, 2011a, page 12) ‘Light-touch’ judgement, although publicly humiliating? No operating restrictions Monitoring inspection within the year and full inspection after a year Opportunity to attend a school improvement seminar Expected to amend school plans
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Identification problem We aim to estimate the causal impact of being judged by Ofsted as unsatisfactory on school performance Endogeneity of failure: underperforming schools have different levels and trajectories of achievement, regardless of Ofsted inspections Estimation approach: regression discontinuity design (RDD) in a panel data context, comparing the performance for schools that are designated as just failing with those just passing Intuition is that schools around the failure threshold are very similar, except for random measurement of quality by inspectors A running variable based on sub-criteria judgements captures continuous variation between schools, on top of which is the discontinuity of a discrete judgement of ‘fail’ or ‘pass’
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Ofsted inspections data Year02/0303/0404/0505/0606/0707/0808/09 Number of school visits4765604529261,106971638 Number of sub-criteria1933 55415865 Rating = Excellent181013n/a Outstanding/Very good1179810998165180151 Good202264190358438417283 Satisfactory114130107348415300167 Unsatisfactory184424122887437 Poor5149n/a Very poor200n/a Proportion failing (%)5.310.47.313.28.07.65.8
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National Pupil Database (02-11) National Pupil Database from 2002 onwards, aggregated to school- level variables The achievement of the year 11 cohorts is measured using: ‘Capped GCSE’ = average score across all pupils in their best 8 subjects at GCSE, standardised across all pupils as a z- score ‘%5AC GCSE’ = proportion of pupils achieving five or more ‘good’ GCSEs at grades A*-C average school grades in English and maths measured on a scale of 0 (=U) to 8 (=A*) Control variables include free school meals, ethnicity, gender, English mother tongue proportions and average deprivation and prior attainment for cohort
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Selecting ‘just’ passers and ‘just’ fails From multiple sub-criteria to a continuous, uni-dimensional measure of failure Role of rating variable: Divides schools into those that actually passed and failed reasonably well Has enough variation to distinguish between bad fails and very bad fails Our rating variable is prediction from the sub-criteria: fail s = β 0 + β 1 *%fail s + β 2 *%satisfactories s + ε s (centred around zero)
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Rating variable and bandwidth 8
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Fuzzy regression discontinuity Instrumented using threshold dummy (rating>0) and quadratic of rating variable on each side of threshold Level and change in control variables: -Prior attainment x 3 -FSM and deprivation -EAL, ethnicity, female Change in school GCSE outcomes at t+1, t+2, t+3, t+4 minus t-1 Prior trend in GCSE outcome variable Inspection year dummies
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Illustration of impact of failing 10
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Fuzzy RDD results Difference in GCSE:(t+1) – (t-1)(t+2) – (t-1)(t+3) – (t-1)(t+4) – (t-1) All observations 0.057***0.104***0.112***0.123*** (0.012)(0.015)(0.016)(0.022) N 4004396633132359 Broad bandwidth 0.043*0.069**0.092***0.135*** (0.022)(0.027)(0.031)(0.043) N 467466421325 Narrow bandwidth 0.0460.102***0.121**0.140** (0.032)(0.036)(0.044)(0.055) N 315314283232 V narrow bandwidth 0.0220.0210.1350.082 (0.061)(0.067)(0.084)(0.100) N 156 139119
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How is the change achieved? Do schools: simply try to raise teaching effectiveness, or Game by introducing a lot of GCSE-equivalents? Do schools focus: Just on marginal pupils, or All pupils?
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Different outcome variables Difference in GCSE: (t+1) – (t- 1) (t+2) – (t- 1) (t+3) – (t- 1) (t+4) – (t- 1) Capped mean GCSE score 0.0460.102***0.121**0.140** (0.032)(0.036)(0.044)(0.055) N 315314283232 Fraction with least 5 A*-C GCSE 0.0240.037*0.050**0.058** (0.019)(0.021)(0.025)(0.029) N 315314283232 Mean English GCSE score 0.139**0.164**0.141*0.094 (0.062)(0.068)(0.079)(0.082) N 315314283232 Mean Maths GCSE score 0.146**0.114*0.1060.074 (0.059)(0.064)(0.074)(0.081) N 315314283232
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Marginal pupils versus others Difference in GCSE: (t+1) – (t-1)(t+2) – (t-1)(t+3) – (t-1)(t+4) – (t-1) Lower ability students0.0100.075*0.117**0.118* (0.037)(0.045)(0.048)(0.062) Marginal students0.082*0.093*0.113**0.157** (0.044)(0.048)(0.053)(0.064) Higher ability students0.085*0.106**0.095*0.216*** (0.044)(0.050)(0.055)(0.069)
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Conclusions Findings Schools failing their Ofsted inspections improve their subsequent performance relative to the score in the pre-visit year The magnitudes are quantitatively very significant: around 10% of a (student-level) SD The main impact arises two years after the visit in this data Effects are consistent across individual subjects Why do they improve? Threat from re-inspection? Information about relative performance? Public stigma of failure? Policy implications Cost compared to alternatives What to do with satisfactory schools?
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Full report available at: http://repec.ioe.ac.uk/repec/pdf/qsswp1202.pdf
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