An Evaluation of the Attainment Gaps in State Schools in England: Evidence from Next Steps’ Age 25 Sweep Dataset
This paper evaluates the higher education (HE) admissions policy by examining the educational attainment gaps in state schools of young people from different socio-economic backgrounds in England. We analysed data for a cohort of 5192 state-educated young people from the large-scale nationally repre...
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2025-02-01
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| author | Xin Shao Binwei Lu |
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| description | This paper evaluates the higher education (HE) admissions policy by examining the educational attainment gaps in state schools of young people from different socio-economic backgrounds in England. We analysed data for a cohort of 5192 state-educated young people from the large-scale nationally representative longitudinal Next Steps dataset from 2004 to 2015, linked to the robust administrative National Pupil Database (NPD) for England. The analytical methods used include effect sizes and correlations. The results show a clear pattern of the socio-economic stratification of young people’s educational attainment. Pupil deprivation is a key indicator which is consistently associated with lower educational attainment. While this is not surprising, our study also suggests that there are other factors besides the family backgrounds which are associated with young people’s educational outcomes. Pupils’ enjoyment of school, their educational aspirations, and their parent’s aspirations for their children are found to have a positive correlation with attainment at school, suggesting that educational aspirations and positive school experiences might contribute to a narrowing of deprivation-related gaps. As the analyses also suggest that young people who went to university and those in professional occupations consistently achieved higher academic performance than their peers, the findings have policy implications for improving social mobility. While it is not possible to alter parents’ socioeconomic backgrounds, raising children’s aspirations and making school enjoyable are amenable to policies and interventions. The common practice of using academic attainment as a selection criterion for admission to HE is likely to disadvantage children from low socioeconomic families, with implications for social mobility. The contextualised admission (CA) policy should lead to fairer approaches, which could be used for admissions to HE. |
| format | Article |
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| language | English |
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| series | Education Sciences |
| spelling | doaj-art-80b123bf89c54a3fa51da8e9b69505fd2025-08-20T02:44:38ZengMDPI AGEducation Sciences2227-71022025-02-0115217910.3390/educsci15020179An Evaluation of the Attainment Gaps in State Schools in England: Evidence from Next Steps’ Age 25 Sweep DatasetXin Shao0Binwei Lu1Centre for Educational Leadership, University College London, London WC1H 0AL, UKCollege of Education, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, ChinaThis paper evaluates the higher education (HE) admissions policy by examining the educational attainment gaps in state schools of young people from different socio-economic backgrounds in England. We analysed data for a cohort of 5192 state-educated young people from the large-scale nationally representative longitudinal Next Steps dataset from 2004 to 2015, linked to the robust administrative National Pupil Database (NPD) for England. The analytical methods used include effect sizes and correlations. The results show a clear pattern of the socio-economic stratification of young people’s educational attainment. Pupil deprivation is a key indicator which is consistently associated with lower educational attainment. While this is not surprising, our study also suggests that there are other factors besides the family backgrounds which are associated with young people’s educational outcomes. Pupils’ enjoyment of school, their educational aspirations, and their parent’s aspirations for their children are found to have a positive correlation with attainment at school, suggesting that educational aspirations and positive school experiences might contribute to a narrowing of deprivation-related gaps. As the analyses also suggest that young people who went to university and those in professional occupations consistently achieved higher academic performance than their peers, the findings have policy implications for improving social mobility. While it is not possible to alter parents’ socioeconomic backgrounds, raising children’s aspirations and making school enjoyable are amenable to policies and interventions. The common practice of using academic attainment as a selection criterion for admission to HE is likely to disadvantage children from low socioeconomic families, with implications for social mobility. The contextualised admission (CA) policy should lead to fairer approaches, which could be used for admissions to HE.https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/2/179higher educationattainment gapsequity in educationcontextualised admission policy |
| spellingShingle | Xin Shao Binwei Lu An Evaluation of the Attainment Gaps in State Schools in England: Evidence from Next Steps’ Age 25 Sweep Dataset Education Sciences higher education attainment gaps equity in education contextualised admission policy |
| title | An Evaluation of the Attainment Gaps in State Schools in England: Evidence from Next Steps’ Age 25 Sweep Dataset |
| title_full | An Evaluation of the Attainment Gaps in State Schools in England: Evidence from Next Steps’ Age 25 Sweep Dataset |
| title_fullStr | An Evaluation of the Attainment Gaps in State Schools in England: Evidence from Next Steps’ Age 25 Sweep Dataset |
| title_full_unstemmed | An Evaluation of the Attainment Gaps in State Schools in England: Evidence from Next Steps’ Age 25 Sweep Dataset |
| title_short | An Evaluation of the Attainment Gaps in State Schools in England: Evidence from Next Steps’ Age 25 Sweep Dataset |
| title_sort | evaluation of the attainment gaps in state schools in england evidence from next steps age 25 sweep dataset |
| topic | higher education attainment gaps equity in education contextualised admission policy |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/2/179 |
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