A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF SCHOOL EXAMINATION RESULTS

Data on examination results from inner London schools are analysed in relation to intake achievement, pupil gender and school type. The exam ination achievement, averaged over subjects, is studied as is achievem ent in the separate subjects of mathematics and English. Multilevel mo dels are fitted so that the variation between schools can be studied. It is shown that confidence intervals for school 'residuals' or 'effec ts' are wide, so that few schools can be separated reliably. In partic ular, no fine rank ordering of schools legitimately can be produced. A bivariate model for mathematics and English examination achievement s cores is fitted The student level variance for both subjects is shown to increase from the lowest to the highest intake achievement group, w ith moderately high correlation between the subjects. Tbe paper discus ses the implications of these findings for the publication of 'league tables' of school examination and test scores.