Children's educational progress: partitioning family, school and area effects

Authors: Rasbash, Jon¹; Leckie, George¹; Pillinger, Rebecca¹; Jenkins, Jennifer²

Source: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), Volume 173, Number 3, July 2010 , pp. 657-682(26)

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

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Abstract:

Summary.

School effectiveness analyses have largely ignored the role of the family as an important source of variation for children's educational progress. Sibling analyses in developmental psychology and behavioural genetics have largely ignored sources of shared environmental variation beyond the immediate family. We formulate a multilevel cross-classified model that examines variation in children's progress during secondary schooling and partitions this variability into pupil, family, primary school, secondary school, local education authority and residential area. Our results suggest that about 50% of what has been labelled as pupil variation in school effectiveness models is really between-family variation and that about 22% of the total variance is due to shared environments beyond the immediate family.

Keywords: Behavioural genetics; Child development; Cross-classified model; Multilevel model; School effectiveness; Twins; Value-added model

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-985X.2010.00642.x

Affiliations: 1: University of Bristol, UK 2: University of Toronto, Canada

Publication date: 2010-07-01