muestran las cinco zonas climáticas de la tierra El clima polar en amarillo, el clima templado en azul y el clima cálido en rojo.
1.2. Los espacios de los mercaderes
The introduction of the National Curriculum caused problems because the GCSE grading scale was different from the criterion referenced 10 point scale proposed for the National Curriculum (TGAT, 1988). The conflict arose because the system of assessment for the NC proposed by the Task Group on Assessment and Testing (TGAT) had four potentially conflicting purposes (Broadfoot and Gipps, 1996, p.152). For government the key purpose was accountability through the use of a nationally imposed common assessment scheme that meant pupil attainment in different schools could be compared with confidence. This policy was fundamental to the quasi-market strategy being introduced because the logic was that parents would use the data to choose schools and force poorly performing schools to either improve or close.
After a period of intense debate during which the incompatibility of the two
assessment systems was identified and concerns about the quality and standards of the GCSE examination were called into question by ministers and opponents (Daugherty, 1995, p.138) the ‘political state’ (Hodgson and Spours, 2005) provided a solution to the conflict. The Dearing Review (Dearing 1994) recommended that GCSE grades should be used to grade students at KS4. Both sides gratefully, if in some cases reluctantly,
accepted the resolution of the conflict (Daugherty, 1995, p.140). Grades A-C were prioritised because they were equivalent to passes at GCE O-level and they soon came to be regarded as the ‘gold’ standard of performance although there was limited educational rationale for making this the ‘pass’ mark.
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One outcome of the Education Reform Act (1988) was the collection of large amounts of longitudinal data about individual children that was used to both inform policy and to influence schools (Smith, 2008; Hopkins, 2009). This provided data about education in England that were not previously available. The New Labour Government stated the purposes of the National Pupil Database (NPD) were to:
inform, influence and improve education policy and to monitor the
performance of the education service as a whole. For example, the NPD is used to calculate contextualised value added (CVA) to measure school effectiveness and is also used to compare pupils' national curriculum assessment, GCSE and post-16 attainment by key pupil characteristics such as ethnic group, special educational needs status and free school meals eligibility to help set and measure national indicators and targets.
(Hansard, 2010) The cohort analysis used within this study was derived from this longitudinal database (NPD/PLASC), first more widely available in 2002 (Palmer 2011). This database was therefore an assessment and qualification policy tool (Rawling, 2001, p.101) increasingly used to support the policy themes initially introduced in the 1980s, formalised in 1992 by the Choice and Diversity white paper (DFE/WO, 1992) and continued by subsequent governments. The data was often used with limited reference to spatial diversity. New Labour argued that social context was no excuse for poor performance although there was recognition that some ‘places’ required more resources. To this end the NPD was used to target resources at the local level:
The inclusion of postcode data allows for residency-based analyses to help target resources as effectively as possible; for example, matched data extracts are routinely provided to local authorities to help monitor indicators and targets and inform their funding formula.
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At the school level government promoted the use of data derived from the NPD to
measure performance both internally and externally (QCA, 1998). Planning within schools was increasingly driven by the NPD with analyses such as Raiseonline and Fischer Family Trust used to compare performance of different subjects and set performance ‘targets’. The data became a major element of Ofsted’ judgements about school performance and parental school preferences were informed by `performance (‘league’) tables.
Over time their use by OFSTED and government became more sophisticated. Complex statistical procedures were developed to measure the Value Added (VA) and the
Contextual Value Added (CVA) scores of a school to make these measures more valid and meaningful. Despite their increased importance for judging the performance of schools the data was questioned in a number of ways. VA data were questioned because it was recognised that overall school performance was strongly related to performance on entry and this was strongly linked to school location. CVA data that attempted to compensate for local contexts were questioned because of the potential for large inbuilt errors in the statistics (Gorard, 2010b) and their complexity which made outcomes difficult to
understand. The use of league tables for parental choice was questioned because they reflected historical patterns (the student intake was five years previously) so were poor predictors of the performance of the current cohort (Leckie and Goldstein, 2009).
It has therefore been argued that league tables result in three types of ‘consequential accountability’. Increased availability of information about past school performance may increase social segregation as some parents opt for more ‘successful’ schools. A second
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consequence was that education authorities would either implicitly or explicitly use the data to influence change in schools (Burgess et al, 2010, p.2). A third was that schools would begin ‘gaming’ with the curriculum by focusing on more ‘important’ subjects, students at ‘cut off points’ (C/D borderline) and by introducing ‘easier’ subjects to boost performance (Hanushek and Raymond, 2005, p.300).
3. More young people are achieving qualifications, but it is no coincidence that many of the qualifications which have grown in popularity recently are not those best recognised by employers and universities, but those which carry the highest value in school performance tables. Schools have become skilled at meeting government targets but too often have had their ability to do what they think is right for their pupils constrained by government directives or improvement initiatives.
(DfE, 2010, p. 8)
These measures were therefore ‘high stakes’ assessments for schools that influenced funding (school income was dependent on student numbers) and could even cause the closure of schools. The schools most under pressure to meet these targets were those in deprived areas where the intake was mostly in the bottom 25% of the cohort, or where there were a number of grammar or private schools that ‘creamed’ the highest achievers.