This article uses data from the UK 1970 Birth Cohort (N = 10,000) to address the research questio... more This article uses data from the UK 1970 Birth Cohort (N = 10,000) to address the research questions: (a) Who in this cohort made the transition to higher education (HE), and (b) how are the benefits and risks of such participation distributed? We assess the way that the benefits and risks of participation differ according to family background and child development, finding risks to mental health for individuals who attend HE against the odds. We also explore the errors in prediction of standard statistical models in order to introduce a discussion of selection bias linked to a broader policy question of the appreciation of the complexity and idiosyncrasy of individuals' educational pathways. We explore this question in relation to three particular cases that confound the prediction of the statistical analysis in order to clarify the assumptions and limitations of a standard analysis in approaching the problems of developing policy that recognizes individual heterogeneity and diversity.
One in five children in England are recorded as having some kind of special educational need, mea... more One in five children in England are recorded as having some kind of special educational need, meaning that they receive additional help in school; yet there is very little evidence of the effect of such assistance on pupil’s academic progress. This is at least partly because it is usually very difficult to define an appropriate control group for pupils with
Throughout the post-war period there have been many attempts to reform the UK education system. T... more Throughout the post-war period there have been many attempts to reform the UK education system. This article reviews empirical evidence looking at the impact of some key reforms which were designed to address a number of specific problems in the UK education system, namely poor and apparently falling standards in schools, the low staying on rate at age 16, the relatively poor basic skills of the UK population and persistent inequalities in Higher Education.
Across the social sciences, family socio-economic status (SES) is seen as a potentially key deter... more Across the social sciences, family socio-economic status (SES) is seen as a potentially key determinant of children's educational attainment. However, a lot educational research in the UK relies on administrative datasets that rarely contain measures of SES. Instead, they almost always include an indicator of pupils' "Free School Meal (FSM) Eligibility". FSM status is widely used as a proxy for SES in UK educational research, therefore. Future research is likely to rely even more heavily on administrative data, in particular, the National Pupil Database (NPD), and hence on FSM status as a proxy for SES. There is therefore a pressing need to evaluate the validity of the FSM measure in this context. This is our aim.
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Papers by Anna Vignoles