§ Mr. Greenwayasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will place in the Library a copy of his Department's letter to Baroness Cox and Dr. Marks about the recent report by the National Council for Education Standards.
§ Sir Keith JosephI have today placed in the Library a copy of the letter sent from the Department to Baroness Cox and Dr. Marks on 24 October. Since that letter was written the Department's statisticians have discussed the research report with Baroness Cox and Dr. Marks. In view of the wide public interest in this research report, and speculations which have appeared in the press about the Department's views, I have decided, exceptionally, to circulate in theOfficial Report a statement of the Department's views on this research report prepared in the light of further study and the discussion with the researchers mentioned above. Contrary to some press reports, the Department does not regard the research as "seriously flawed".
The report has illustrated the importance and difficulty of research in this area. I have asked the Department to assess various possibilities for further research as a preliminary to deciding whether further public funds should be committed.
DES Views on the NCES Report "Standards in English Schools"
1. The Department welcomes the pioneering work undertaken by the National Council for Educational Standards (NCES) on the use of the published data about school examination results which have become available as a result of the 1980 Education Act. Of particular interest is the advice given in the NCES report to parents and others interested in their local schools on how the data may be used to improve understanding of the quality of education offered.
2. Some of the public discussion following the publication of the NCES report has centred on whether the sample of schools used by the researchers was representative of all schools in 379W England. Doubts were expressed in the Department's letter of 24 October sent to Baroness Cox and Dr. Marks. Subsequent discussion with the researchers has reassured the Department about the representativeness of the sample.
3. The NCES report highlights the large variations in GCE/ CSE examination achievements among local education authorities. The Department is well aware of these and of the great contrasts between the educational tasks faced by local education authorities. It has long been recognised that social and economic conditions made a marked contribution to these differences. Those who wish to analyse variations among local education authorities need to decide how such factors can be allowed for, and what weight to put on them. There are many approaches to the problem of how to adjust for these factors and no universally accepted means of so doing. The alternatives are a matter for debate among professionals.
4. The NCES report describes analysis at local education authority level—and for individual schools—for which some degree of adjustment for social and economic background factors has been made. The Department believes that additional data would have allowed better adjustment for these factors to have been made. The Department now intends to make generally available all of those data readily to hand, to assist further research.
5. While acknowledging the difficulties of applying regression analysis and similar techniques to educational data, the Department is currently of the view that they have an important place in any analysis which attempts to adjust for social and economic factors. The NCES researchers chose to make limited use of such techniques. The Department will shortly publish, as an example, some work recently undertaken on the statistical relationship between local education authority examination results and expenditure. This study uses regression techniques to adjust for socio-economic factors.