London Borough of Hillingdon

Using ACORN to support school improvement

The London Borough of Hillingdon covers areas of relative prosperity to the north and deprivation to the south. “Value added”, the amount of progress pupils make from one key stage to another, is relatively weak within the secondary sector despite the majority of teaching and learning judged to be good by OFSTED in recent inspections.

Of particular concern to the LEA is the achievement of the white working classes. Class is notoriously difficult to quantify; all those who work in education can instinctively identify those who belong to the group but would find it difficult to define a set of quantifiable characteristics by which they could sort them from other pupils based on the mass of pupil-level data available to LEAs.

Free school meal eligibility identifies those pupils in the most deprived circumstances. But in many cases, those eligible do not apply. Furthermore, there are shades of deprivation within the group of pupils not eligible for free school meals, ranging from hard pressed to wealthy achievers. For this reason, we could not assume that a school at which 25% of pupils were eligible for free school meals served a more deprived community than a school at which 18% were eligible as we do not know about deprivation amongst the majority.

In 2003, the achievement of White British pupils eligible for free school meals at GCSE, both in terms of raw attainment and progress made, gave grave concern. Figure 1 shows the percentage of pupils achieving 5 A*-C grades in 2003 by ethnic group, with the White British groups sub-divided into those known to be eligible for free school meals and those who were not. In addition, a projected percentage of 5 A*-C grades is shown for each group. For every pupil, the probability of him or her achieving 5 A*-C grades has been determined based on key stage 2 results, gender, and the progress made by similar pupils in previous years.

It should be noted that pupils eligible for free school meals tend to achieve less well, regardless of ethnicity. Besides the Indian group, however, most other ethnic groups are sparsely represented in Hillingdon. That said, the “attainment gap” between those eligible for free school meals and those not is most pronounced among the White British group.

Figure 1 shows that fewer than 20% of White British pupils eligible for free school meals achieved 5 A*-C grades at GCSE in 2003 compared to a LEA average of 47%. Moreover, based on that group of pupils’ key stage 2 results, just 34% had the potential to achieve 5 A*-C grades. This is a group that entered secondary education with low attainment in the primary sector, which subsequently made poor progress during key stages 3 and 4.

Generally, higher than expected percentages of pupils from Black and Asian backgrounds achieved 5 A*-C grades, and lower than expected percentages from White and Mixed backgrounds.

Figure 1: Actual and projected percentages of students achieving 5 A*-C grades at GCSE by ethnicity, London Borough of Hillingdon 2003

White British students not eligible for free school meals composed 60% of Hillingdon’s 2003 year 11 cohort. This is a significant group. The LEA wished to gain a better understanding of deprivation among this group of pupils in order to inform school improvement strategies and support students at risk of not achieving their potential. Headteachers felt that analysing data by pupil residence was the key, but even ward level analysis could be distorted by the presence of areas of affluence alongside areas of deprivation.

In August 2003, Hillingdon LEA purchased ACORN data, which it applied to the postcodes of all its students. This offered a much more sensitive classification of the areas in which pupils were resident that circumvented the problems of ward level analysis. This is shown markedly in Figure 2 where the area to the South West of the Borough to the north of the M4, incorporating Yiewsley and West Drayton, comprises postcodes classified as relatively affluent by ACORN (green) which sit alongside areas of deprivation (orange/ red).

Figure 2: ACORN group, postcodes in London Borough of Hillingdon, 2003

As ACORN is a nested classification system, reporting can be performed at a variety of levels. Each of the 54 types can be aggregated within 17 groups (displayed in Figure 2). In turn, the 17 groups can be aggregated into 6 categories. When working with schools, 17 groups can become rather cumbersome in a small LEA and so reporting tends to be conducted at category level.

Returning to the issue of the impact of deprivation upon attainment among White British not known to be eligible for free school meals, and having assigned each pupil to their ACORN category, actual and projected percentages of pupils achieving 5 A*-C grades can be calculated for each ACORN category.

Figure 3: Actual and projected percentages of students achieving 5 A*-C grades at GCSE by ACORN category of home postcode, White British pupils not eligible for free school meals, London Borough of Hillingdon 2003

Attainment is lowest among pupils resident in “Aspiring” and “Striving” areas, which would be considered the most deprived ACORN categories. Moreover, the actual percentage of pupils from these areas achieving 5 A*-C grades is significantly below what might be expected given their key stage 2 results.

ACORN therefore allows the identification of a deprivation effect amongst pupils not known to be eligible for free school meals, and shows that White British pupils resident in more deprived areas are less likely to achieve 5 A*-C grades at GCSE and tend to make less progress during their secondary education.

The LEA conducts, on behalf of its schools, a substantial amount of work estimating future performance in key stage tests and GCSE examinations. In the next round of estimates to be produced for secondary schools in June 2004, the ACORN group and free school meal eligibility of pupils will be reported to schools alongside key stage 2 results and key stage 3/ GCSE estimates. This will allow the LEA and its schools to target pupils from more deprived backgrounds at risk of not achieving their potential and begin to improve the relatively weak value added scores hitherto achieved by the LEA.

ACORN