achievement in 16 developing and 13 industrialised countries examined a range of
school variables and regressed science achievement scores against them. This study
found relatively little variance explained by school factors in the industrialised
countries but much larger amounts explained in the developed countries (27% of the
variance in achievement explained by school quality in Indian children and only 3% by
social class; 25% by school quality in Thailand and only 6% by social class). However,
the total variance explained in the cases studied was typically around the 20 -30% level
leaving much that was not explained. School effects seemed more important in subjects
like science where systematic study is generally only possible in schools.
The literature that now exists on school effectiveness is difficult to summarise. More
than 50 multivariate or experimental school effect studies had been undertaken by 1987
relating to developing countries and were reviewed by Fuller (1987) (see Appendix for
a summary table). The studies are methodologically diverse, vary in terms of the
specification of the dependent and independent variables, use a range of sampling
techniques, and have been undertaken in very differently structured education systems.
The problems include the cross-cultural transferability of notions like social class- the
difficulties in specifying the dependent variable - achievement; the realisation that often
large parts of the total variance remained unexplained after the effects of independent
variables have been accounted for; and the rarity of studies that are capable of
controlling for the entry characteristics of students. Not surprisingly a universally
applicable set of conclusions is elusive. Synthetic reviews like Fuller's (1987) and that
by Schiefelbein and Simmons (1981) have difficulties of aggregation that make it
difficult to decide what importance to give to findings that appear true in some systems
and not in others. What can we conclude from the 11 analyses cited of school
expenditure and achievement, six of which confirm a positive relationship, and five do
not? Or of Hanushek's review of more than 150 studies which concluded that there was
no systematic relationship between expenditures and student achievement; or that
attitudes and drop-out rates, reduced class sizes and more trained teachers were also
unlikely to make much difference to achievement (Hanushek 1986). Common sense
suggests that, in the limiting cases, levels of expenditure must have some relationship to
achievement; nevertheless it is unlikely to be a sufficient condition alone. One of the
earlier studies (Thias and Carnoy 1973) concluded that there was no relationship
between expenditure per pupil and achievement at primary level but that there was at
the secondary level. The latter was such that they claimed raising national examination
scores by 5 % would require a 50% increase in expenditures per pupil. This illustrates
one of the limitations of this kind of analysis. There are many ways of increasing
achievement and each will have a different cost structure. Simply redistributing existing
resources towards the least favoured schools (which would have little or no direct cost)
is likely to have a much bigger effect on achievement in those under performing
schools than would distributing increased resources evenly to include those which
already enjoy surpluses of qualified teachers, textbooks and other learning materials.
The incremental rate of return on investment to raise achievement in schools which