The Impact of the European School Improvement Study on Quality and Equity in Education

Abstract

In this chapter, we present an experimental study investigating the extent to which schools can make use of the proposed methodology and of findings of research on equity to develop strategies and action plans to promote quality and equity in education. Specifically, the study presented in this chapter was designed mainly to help children in socially disadvantaged areas who had not benefited from schooling in terms of acquiring basic skills in mathematics. It was intended that this would be achieved by supporting schools in using the dynamic approach for school improvement purposes. At the beginning of school year 2015–2016, a sample of 72 primary schools in four European countries (Cyprus, England, Greece and Ireland) was selected and randomly split into the experimental and control groups. Since only the experimental group made use of DASI, the chapter provides information not only about the intervention, but also about the support offered to each group of schools in developing their improvement strategies and action plans. We then present the main results of the study which reveal the impact of DASI on promoting quality. Using multilevel SEM approaches, direct and indirect effects of the intervention on promoting student achievement gains were identified. To investigate the impact of DASI on equity, the impact of the SES on student achievement was measured at the beginning and at the end of the intervention in each group. The direct impact of SES was found to be smaller in schools implementing DASI at the end of the intervention. However, the total effect of SES on final achievement gradually increased in the schools of the control group but remained the same in the experimental group.