Value-added measures of school effectiveness in the United Kingdom

This paper has mostly focused on the performance of schools in terms of examination and test results. On their own, such results are insufficient for proper judgements about schools’ performance. Other pupil outcomes such as pupil attendance, capacity for independent learning, attitudes towards school and learning, behaviour and selfconcept are also important. School effectiveness research aims to investigate a broad range of educational outcomes. Examples of this approach are provided by the Junior School Project (Mortimore et al., 1988), the Lancashire project (Thomas & Mortimore, 1996) and the ISEP in Scotland (MacBeath & Mortimore, 1994) which involves collecting pupil, teacher and parent attitude data in addition to academic outcomes. Nevertheless, the main performance indicator for schools continues to be how successful they are at ensuring that as many pupils as possible achieve their full academic potential.