Techniques for defining school catchment areas for comparison with census data

Abstract

School performance tables have been used in the UK with the intention of giving parents an indication as to how well local schools are performing in order that they may make a more informed decision about which school to send their child to. It is likely that the performance measurements are not only a result of the success of the school but also dependent on the background of the children that attend it. School performance tables do not provide information upon the social context in which the school is set. It is, therefore, important to be able to provide information about the social characteristics of a school's catchment area. This is technically difficult because firstly school catchment areas are not strictly defined and secondly census units have no link to catchment geography of a school. This paper offers three techniques that may be suitable for establishing the link between the point information available on the performance of the school and the areal census data. Each technique is tested to see how well this link has been established in each case.