Secondary Schools Background

A statistical analysis of the participation of year 9 pupils in Study Support activities throughout the academic year 2003/2004 carried out by Tower Hamlets LEA's Study Support and Research & Statistics teams confirmed what local and national research had previously indicated: study support makes a difference to pupil attainment.

Students who participated regularly in one or more out of school hours learning activities during year 9, achieved almost one additional point (0. 88)** in their Maths SATs compared to students who had no record of attendance. In other words, those who participated regularly in one or more OoSHL activities had an advantage of almost a term's work.

Approach

As result of the DFES national Quality Development Programme for Study Support, the LEA's Out of School Hours Learning (Study Support) Service asked all secondary schools to provide data on the level of participation in out of school hours learning amongst their year 9 cohort. Eight schools responded with a simple categorisation of each year 9 student as follows:

•  no attendance at all (group A);
•  regular attendance in one activity (group B);
•  regular attendance in two or more activities (group C). 

This data was supplied to the LEA's Research & Statistics team who analysed this data against the value-added points in Maths from KS2 to KS3 for the same students.

Outcomes

Overall results The figures show that the average value added points from KS2 to KS3 Maths SATs for all the 1065 students in the 7 schools for whom the LEA had this data was 6.38 , in other words just over one national curriculum level;

•  for group A, the 359 students in the 7 schools who did not attend any OoSHL activities, this drops to 6.18;
•  for group B , the 305 students in the 7 schools who attended one activity regularly, this increases to 7.11;
•  for group C, the 203 students who attended more than one activity regularly it drops back slightly to 7.00 but is still higher than the 6.18 for non-attenders.

The mean improvement for all students who participated in OoSHL (groups B and C) is 7.06, i.e. .0.88 points higher than the value-added of 6.18 for students who did not participate (group A).

Individual School Results

With one exception, the research suggests those pupils in all schools benefited from participation in one or more activities on a regular basis. However there are some interesting variations:

• The value-added difference between students who participated in one or more activities (groups B + C) and those who participated in none (group A) ranges from +1.53 points at school 5 to +0.90 at school 1 to -0.03 at school 4. 
• For most schools, group C students did better than group B; in other words the more study support activities the students participated in the better they did. However in schools 3 and 5 the greatest value-added was achieved by group B rather than group C: 7.52 points compared to 6.78 points and 8.83 points compared to 7.73 points respectively.
• Students in school 4 who participated in 2 or more activities (group C) had an advantage of .024 of a point over those in group A who participated in none (5.76 compared to 5.52); however those who participated in one activity had the lowest value-added of 5.33 points. What needs to be taken into consideration here however is that the sample group, those for whom data on OoSHL participation was available, was very small i.e. 80 students out of the 187 at school 4 for whom value-added data was available.

Future developments

OoSHL co-ordinators in each of the eight schools have a copy of the raw data for their cohort which they will analyse further to seek answers to some of the variations indicated above. Tower Hamlets OoSHL (Study Support) Service will continue to track the Study Support participation of the same cohort, the current year 10, throughout KS4 in order to look in greater detail at the impact on attainment of different types of study support activity.

Towards the end of the academic year 2004/2005, year 10 students in each of the participating schools will be asked to complete a simple audit of their participation in the study support activities offered by their schools and in the local community grouped into eleven different categories. They will be asked to assess their participation in each category in the following terms; no participation; regular participation in one activity; regular participation in more than one activity. The same cohort will complete a similar audit in May 2006 at the end of year 11.

This data will then be analysed against pupils value-added between KS3 and KS4 and against any differentials between students' predicted and actual GCSE grades.

1. National Curriculum levels are broken down into points with one NC level equal to 6 points. The national expectation is that students will progress 1.5 levels/9 points over the course of KS3 - that is one point per term.

2. Maths National Curriculum levels were used since they are accepted as a reliable indicator of achievement at KS3 and 2004 English KS3 SATs results were not available at the time of the analysis.

3. See ** above.

For further information please contact:

Lorraine Hachou, Joint Head, OoSHL (Study Support) Service, LBTH, Tower Hamlets Professional Development Centre, English Street, London E34TA.   lorraine.hachou@towerhamlets.gov.uk