Student Academic Performance as a measure of School Effectiveness

School effectiveness has been measured in terms of student outcomes. The overall student achievement has been taken into consideration. One outcome is student wellbeing, which has been measured using the student questionnaire. The second student outcome is a measure of the student academic performance as described here.

The choice of the 8 schools is an important step, as it involves a mix of state and private schools and; low input and high input schools in terms of student intake. The academic performance of the school is one aspect of school effectiveness and it depends on a number of factors including

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school inputs and school factors. Mauritian secondary schools admit students based on their Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) results. A student with very good CPE results has a greater probability to obtain very good results for School Certificate (SC). There are significant differences among the students being admitted in form 1 in the different types of school (state, confessional and private). Some schools display a good academic performance because they get the best students in Form 1 whereas some schools are low performing because they admit students of low ability. Therefore, the school academic performance cannot be judged purely on the basis of the academic output. In order to obtain an impartial measure of student performance, both the input and the output have been considered. The input is in terms of Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) results and the output is in terms of School Certificate (SC) results. SC results have been chosen because from form 1 to form 5 there is little mobility of students from one school to another and less drop out as compared to Higher School certificate (HSC).

In order to obtain a rather precise picture of the school academic performance a qualitative analysis of the results has been carried out. The SC results for the year 2015 have been considered as it is the year during which the student survey has been carried out. In order to make a valid comparison, the CPE results of the same students have been taken, that is the CPE results for the year 2010.

Data collection for Student Academic Performance

The students’ results have been collected from the 8 schools surveyed and from the website of the Mauritius Examination Syndicate (MES). The input results that is Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) results have been obtained from the schools. The output results that is School Certificate (SC) results have been obtained from the MES as they are freely accessible on the MES website. The student academic results are sensitive data which schools are not very willing to disclose.

For CPE results, we had to depend on the schools to get these data. CPE results for the year 2010 (as these students sat for SC examinations in 2015) were collected. This was problematic as some schools either did not have the data or were unwilling to provide them. We had to wait for a long time with several reminders before we could get all the data.

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As for the SC results, it was easy as they were all on the website of the Mauritius Examination Syndicate (MES). However, we had to make do with the available data which were limited as discussed later in this section.

School Academic Input and Output

The student academic performance has been measured using the student academic input and output as explained above. In Mauritius, secondary schools enroll students largely based in their academic performance. Some schools get students who are academically very good, others have low ability students and some schools cater for mixed abilities. Therefore, in order to assess the students’ performance in a fair and consistent manner, the academic results of students admitted in form 1 and academic results of the same students after 5 years of schooling have been considered and a measure of the academic input and output have been calculated.

The school academic input used is the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) as students are admitted to secondary schools based on these examinations which are conducted at national level. The CPE is conducted, corrected and computed by the Mauritian Examination Syndicate (MES) for all students in Mauritius at the end of the primary cycle (except for the fee paying private schools). Secondary schools in Mauritius have markedly different students’ academic intake at form 1 level, depending on the demand. Some schools are high demand and because of the high demand and limited number of seats available, they admit students with better CPE results. Unlike most developed countries, state schools are preferred to private schools as they offer better infrastructure and facilities. Confessional schools are also considered as ‘good’

schools. Hence, State schools are high demand schools and admit students with the best results at CPE. Private schools admit students of lower ability and confessional schools are mixed abilities as they admit 50% of high ability students from the MES list and 50% of students according to their own criteria.

The academic output used in the research is School Certificate (SC) results as these examinations are taken by all students after 5 years of secondary schooling. There are few drop outs during these 5 years leading to the SC examinations. After the SC examinations a good number of students who have done very well tend to move to a ‘better’ school to complete their secondary schooling and sit for the Higher School Certificate (HSC) Examinations after 2 years of studies.

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Because of this mobility of students, SC results have been used as the school academic output instead of HSC results.

For CPE, a student sits for 6 subjects (Math, English, French, Science, Environmental Studies and one oriental language) and the overall aggregate is calculated on results obtained in 4 best subjects. The highest grade is A* which corresponds to 6 units, A corresponds to 5 units, B to 4 units, C to 3 units, D to 2 units and E to 1 unit. So the maximum aggregate a student can score is (6 x 4) 24. The Mauritius Examination syndicate (MES) is responsible for providing the CPE results at national level; based on which seats in the secondary schools are allocated. The CPE aggregates of the students in the 8 schools under study have been obtained as given in Annex b. It is to be noted that 80% of the students have scored an aggregate of 20 to 24 and only 20% of the students have scored less than aggregate 20. From these raw data, the % aggregate for each school has been calculated as follows:

Table 7. CPE Aggregates CPE

Aggregate

% NUMBER OF STUDENTS PER SCHOOL

A B C D E F G H

24 11.4 15.2 35.6 100 0 2 2 100

23 10.6 30.5 23.1 0 1 11.1 4.1 0

22 22.7 15.5 5.7 0 1 30.3 8.7 0

21 47.2 11.4 2.9 0 6 29.3 25.6 0

20 8.1 7.6 8.7 0 16 27.3 24.6 0

< 20 0 19.8 24 0 76 0 34.9 0

The CPE aggregates for the students admitted in form 1 vary from one school to another. The 2 high input state schools (schools D and H) admit all students with aggregate 24. The 2 high input confessional schools (B and C) admit 50% of students with best aggregates 24 and 23 from the Mauritius Examination Syndicate (MES) list and 50% of the students based on their own criteria and these students are of different abilities. The 2 low input state schools (schools A and F) have majority of their students with aggregate between 20 and 22, and none of the students are below 20. The 2 low input private schools (schools E and G) admit students of the lowest abilities, majority of them have aggregates less than 21.

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These CPE results give an idea of the type of student input in the 8 schools. State school get the best students in terms of CPE results, confessional schools get mixed ability students and private schools get low ability students.

Considering the CPE aggregates and their distribution in the 8 schools, 6 categories have been created. These categories have been made to the best of our ability since we do not have individual students’ results. The total number of students in the 8 schools is 791, which when divided by 6 gives 131. As the number of students scoring less than 20 is 158, it is taken collectively as the last category and each aggregate from 20 to 24 is considered as one category.

Each category has been given a weightage or value so that the score can be calculated for each of the 8 schools.

Table 8. Categories of CPE Aggregates

Category CPE

For each school, a score has been calculated which gives a measure of the student input.

Example of the calculation of the score for one school (school A) is given below:

Table 9. Calculation of Input Score CPE

In this way, the input score is calculated for the 8 schools and the values are given in table 10.

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Table 10. Input Scores for the 8 Schools

School School Type Input

Score

These input scores tally with the types of schools mentioned earlier, that is high input and low input and state and private (private includes confessional schools). In the table below, the schools have been classified accordingly. They inform us about the ability of the students admitted in form 1. High input state schools get the best students (maximum score of 600). There is not much difference between the low input state schools and the confessional schools as the latter cater for mixed abilities. Private schools get students of lowest ability; this is reflected in the input scores (135 and 228.2).

One limitation to this calculation is the inability to differentiate between students of high input schools. Students who score 6 A*, 5A* and 4A*, they all get an aggregate of 24. Therefore, we cannot compare the schools which admit students with aggregate 24, though it is well known that some elite schools admit only students with 6A*, for instance school D, as compared to school H. These data are rather sensitive and could not be obtained, so we had to use the CPE results as given on the MES list. In the table below, the schools have been reorganized in terms of school type to show the similarities between the schools.

Table 11. Input Scores classified per school types

Type of school School Input score

High Input State schools D 600

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The chosen output measure is School Certificate (SC) results. It is an international examination and is conducted by the Mauritius Examination Syndicate (MES). SC exam papers are set and corrected by Cambridge International Examinations (CIE). It is a national examination and there is uniformity in the way academic performance of students is assessed.

A student opts for 8 subjects for SC level. Results are given in terms of grades which are between 1 and 9. Grade1 is the best grade and grade 9 is a failure. Grade 1 and 2 are distinctions;

grade 3, 4, 5 and 6 are credits; grade 7 and 8 are passes and 9 is ungraded. The overall SC results are given in the form of an aggregate which is calculated based on the 6 best subjects (which is different from the CPE aggregate). The best performance is an aggregate of (1 x 6) 6. SC results of all schools are rendered public as they are posted on the MES website. However, we can only have the aggregates from 6 to 20 for each school. We do not have individual results for aggregates above 20. The available results given on the website of the Mauritius Examination Syndicate (MES) are given in Annex b.

The SC aggregate distribution has been studied and based on the number of students for each aggregate, 6 categories have been created, same as for CPE so that the comparisons are valid and fair. Since we could not have detailed results for aggregates above 20, we had no choice than to round it up to 1 category although the number of students in this category is very high (739 out of 1161, making a % of 63.65). For 6 to 20, each category has 3 aggregates which are fairly distributed as shown in table 10. Each category is given a weightage or value as for CPE aggregates.

Table 12. Categories for School Certificate Results

The SC % pass for each of the 8 schools is given below.

Category SC Aggregate No. of Students

Value

1 Excellent 6-8 94 6

2 very good 9-11 82 5

3 good 12-14 83 4

4 satisfactory 15-17 95 3

5 average 18-20 68 2

6 below average >20 739 1

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Table 13. Percentage Passes for SC School % pass for SC

The SC results for the year 2015 for the 8 schools have been categorized as follows:

Table 14. SC Aggregates for the 8 schools Aggregate % Number of students for each school

A B C D E F G H

The last row in table 14 represents students who have scored above aggregate 20 and who have passed SC. That is only students who have passed SC have been included in the calculation.

The output score is then calculated in the same manner as for the input score with the 6 categories and the scores are given in table 15 below:

Table 15. Input and Output Scores School Total Output

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When we compare the input and the output scores for the school types, we can see that they both follow a similar trend for all schools except for school F. High input schools also have high output score and low input schools have low output scores.

Table 16. Input and Output Scores classified per school types Types of school School Input Score Output Score

High Input State schools D 600 480.7

Further investigation is to see whether there is a significant difference between the input and output scores for the 8 schools. The differential value between the input score and the output score has been calculated as follows:

Table 17. Calculation of School Performance Coefficient

The difference between output and input has been divided by 100 to obtain a smaller value; and 3 is added to this value in order to give a positive value which is easier to interpret. This differential value is an indicator of school academic performance and has been termed as

“School Performance Coefficient” (SPC).

When we analyse the school performance coefficient for the 8 schools, we can see marked differences between high input and low input schools. A comparative table for school types, consisting of input score, output score and school performance coefficient is given below:

School Input Score

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Table 18. School Performance Coefficient for school types Type of school School Input Score Output Score School

Performance Coefficient

High Input State schools D 600 479.8 1.8

H 600 349.2 0.49

High Input Private (Confessional) schools

B 374.9 243.3 1.68

C 402 261.1 1.67

Low Input State schools A 370 186.4 1.16

F 331.2 106.3 0.75

Low Input Private schools E 135 97.3 2.62

G 228.2 143.2 2.25

These school performance coefficients will be used as a measure of school academic performance and will be discussed in the next chapter.