Moving for your kids

In their online edition, the Observer newspaper in London reported a very interesting study about people who move in order to give their children better schooling. The Centre for the Economics of Education at the London School of Economics recently wrote a study called, 'Peer Effects and Pupil Attainment' which concluded that a move from an average school to a top-line school would result in one G. C. S. E. grade being raised by one level. [G. C. S. E. stands for General Certificate of Secondary Education, and is a set of British qualifications, taken by secondary school students at age 14–16 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. They are essentially standardized achievement tests designed to help British universities when deciding admissions]. So an example of one grade being raised by one level would be five A's and five B's rather than four A's and six B's for students changing to a better school. The largest possible grade movement that could be achieved was three levels; say from a D to an A, or from three C's to three B's. And this would only be achieved by moving from one of the 10 worst schools into one of the U.K.'s ten best schools. In other words, the effect is quite marginal.

One of the authors of the report, Steve Gibbons, stated, "Although the attainment of a child's peer-group does matter, the effects are small. They are much less than seems reasonable given the level of attention that parents pay to them in terms of moving house to find a new school." He went on to say that of all of the factors that affect a students school performance, their peer group accounts for less than 1% of the impact on marks. This goes against the commonly held view that a pupil will be 'pulled down' by other students of lesser ability.

Mr. Gibbons also gave an important caveat when he added that many parents choose to move their children to different areas with better schools for many reasons other than simple academic performance increases. He added that often parents will relocate in order to increase the feeling of security at school.

One member of the National Confederation of Parent-teacher Associations named Marguerite Morrissey added that she had, "once carried out a poll straw of 1,000 parents and asked them what were the most important things to them in terms of their children's schools. The first thing was to be happy; the second was to be safe." She added that the importance of grades was actually seventh on the list. If you'd like to read the original article, it is located here.

Speaking as a former teacher, this can certainly be supported anecdotally. The students with the greatest increases in their learning were invariably those whose parents decided to spend at least a half an hour in the evening with their children's schooling. Unfortunately, this increased time was usually only generated owing to previously very poor results, and was often discontinued soon after academic improvement. It would seem that the old cliche is true: "learning begins in the home", - no matter where the home is located.

Tags: moving, moving children, moving children's school

posted by Anonymous @ 2:14 PM