School, Neighbourhood, and University: The Geographies of Educational Performance and Progression in England

Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, Sep 2014

There has been a vast amount of discussion in both the media and academic literature about the effect of increased tuition fees on access to higher education in England, especially in relation to efforts to implement widening participation programmes. During this debate, the geography of access to higher education has taken a back seat despite growing calls to use contextual data in higher education applications to account for at least some of the presumed spatial disadvantage that is experienced by individuals from less affluent backgrounds. Within this context we use recently released educational performance school data to investigate the composition of higher education access, paying specific attention to the geographical location of the schools from which university applications come and controlling for different school types, school catchment composition and the education environment of the students. The data are analysed within a multilevel modelling framework; the differences between regions in England and between schools according to the class composition of their catchment areas form the main findings. These not only resonate with conventional wisdom on university access but also offer a new perspective on patterns of, in effect, educational relative advantage and disadvantage that are clearly embedded within the country’s geography.

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School, Neighbourhood, and University: The Geographies of Educational Performance and Progression in England

0 ) School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol , Bristol BS8 1SS, United Kingdom 1 School , Neighbourhood, and University 2 The Russell Group universities then were , in addition to Cambridge and Oxford, Birmingham, Bristol , Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow , Imperial College London, King's College London , Leeds, Liverpool, London School of Economics , Manchester , Newcastle, Nottingham, Queen's Belfast, Sheffield, Southampton, Uni- versity College London , Warwick There has been a vast amount of discussion in both the media and academic literature about the effect of increased tuition fees on access to higher education in England, especially in relation to efforts to implement widening participation programmes. During this debate, the geography of access to higher education has taken a back seat despite growing calls to use contextual data in higher education applications to account for at least some of the presumed spatial disadvantage that is experienced by individuals from less affluent backgrounds. Within this context we use recently released educational performance school data to investigate the composition of higher education access, paying specific attention to the geographical location of the schools from which university applications come and controlling for different school types, school catchment composition and the education environment of the students. The data are analysed within a multilevel modelling framework; the differences between regions in England and between schools according to the class composition of their catchment areas form the main findings. These not only resonate with conventional wisdom on university access but also offer a new perspective on patterns of, in effect, educational relative advantage and disadvantage that are clearly embedded within the country's geography. - There has been a substantial debate in the United Kingdom over the last two decades, and especially in England, regarding university entrance criteria. The majority of students are made offers of places on degree programmes on the basis of their expected performance in the A-Level examinations, sat in most cases after 13 years of education; acceptances are then based on achieved performance relative to the offer. In general, the better the students performance the greater their prospects of gaining admission to the so-called elite universities with the highest entry criteria. While that performance is taken as a good indicator of potential for success in a degree programme, it has been argued that some students are advantaged over others in their preparation for those examinations and thus the likelihood that they will fully realise their potential; those who are disadvantaged are less likely to gain a place at an elite university and reap the cultural and economic rewards of studying for a degree there. These arguments have been instrumental, along with issues of raising awareness and ensuring the retention of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, in the development of widening participation (WP) programmes, now in operation at virtually every university in the country and a virtual requirement if they wish to charge fees above the normal maximum of 6,000 per annum. (There is a substantial literature on the nature and impact of the WP programmes over the last two decades: for a review, see Gorard et al., 2006, and, more generally, Macdonald and Stratta, 2001, and Croxford and Raffe, 2013.) Universities can charge up to 9,000 if they can convince the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) that they have provisions for encouraging applications from students from disadvantaged backgrounds, for taking students personal and other characteristics that suggest educational disadvantage into account when making offers of places, and for providing financial and other support for students from such backgrounds (on which see OFFAs most recent annual report: OFFA/HEFCE, 2013). A range of sources of disadvantage has been suggested: some relate to the individuals own circumstances (such as disability); some relate to their family and cultural backgrounds (such as their ethnicity and their households social class: Anders, 2012 and whilst clearly very important we use aggregate data below and thus do not provide an extensive literature overview of that aspect here); some to their local context (such as the neighbourhoods where they live); and others to the characteristics of the school that they attend (see for instance: Archer et al., 2003; Chowdry et al., 2010). Analyses have suggested that all of these factors may be relevant as influences on how well a student performs at both A-level and on a university degree programme: analysis of performance at one of the elite universities shows that students whose backgrounds include one or more of these characteristics perform better in their degree courses than their contemporaries from more advantaged backgrounds who obtained similar grades at Alevel (Hoare and Johnsto (...truncated)


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David Manley, Ron Johnston. School, Neighbourhood, and University: The Geographies of Educational Performance and Progression in England, Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, 2014, pp. 259-282, Volume 7, Issue 3, DOI: 10.1007/s12061-014-9107-1