Differences in Effectiveness Between Primary Schools and their Impact on Secondary School Recommendations

Abstract

In school effectiveness research differences between schools are mainly expressed in percentages of the variance in cognitive test scores. This article focuses on the impact these differences in effectiveness have on the school career of pupils. The analyses were executed on the data of a school effectiveness study carried out in 1987 and 1988. Two groups of outlier primary schools were selected. The pupils were divided into four categories based on their IQ-score, and into four categories based on their SES-score. Four dependent variables were used: test scores on language, test scores on mathematics, expectations for the follow-up secondary school type based on these test scores, and the actual secondary school recommendation given by the teacher. For all groups of pupils the average scores on mathematics, language and the total standard test score differ significantly for both low- and high-effective schools. The actual recommendation for type of secondary education does not differ significantly. This leads to the conclusion that the recommendations given to the other pupils in the same grade seem to be important; schools tend to recommend a secondary school type according to a normal distribution. High-effective schools tend to recommend beneath, while low-effective schools tend to advise above the expectations.