Secondary-school results: the bigger the better?

The larger the secondary school, the better pupils' results and attendance– up to a point, an Institute of Education review of the available research has found. The review overturns the widespread view that student achievement is always higher in smaller schools and student behaviour always worse in larger schools. But the researchers are unable to say at what size attendance is maximized and absence minimized. In the four studies that looked at examination performance in the light of pupils' prior attainment, the optimal school size ranged from 600 to 2,155.

On pupils' behaviour and attitudes, the study with the most reliable evidence found that overall absence was lower in schools with up to about 1,400 on the roll. Above that size, absence tended to increase.

The lead author, Zoe Garrett, said: “For this information to be useful,we need more precise estimates of the optimal size range. There are hardly any secondary schools in England with fewer than 600 or more than 2,000 students.”The findings of the review, led by researchers from the institute's Centre for Evidence-Informed Policy and Practice, with collaborators from the University of Lancaster and London School of Economics, also suggest that costs per student decline as schools get larger.

On the negative side, all the studies found that pupils felt less engaged with larger schools. There was also some evidence that teachers felt less happy with the climate in larger schools and that some kinds of violent behaviour rose as school size increased (although the evidence on violent behaviour was contradictory).

Co-author Mark Newman said: “Our results suggest that the higher levels of student and teacher satisfaction in smaller schools do not, as the small-school lobby suggests, appear to translate into better academic results.”

It has been argued that schools-within-schools could offer the benefits of both small and large schools on the same site, but the team was unable to identify reliable evidence about the benefits or disadvantages of such initiatives. Team members recommend that future school-within-school initiatives should be accompanied by rigorous evaluation.

The nature of the review – it covered only quantitative, not qualitative research – means the researchers cannot say why school size might affect results. They also warn that the general trend of their findings may not apply to all types of school and pupil. The researchers say the review does not provide evidence to support policy initiatives whose sole aim is to limit schools to a certain size. And where the exercise of parental choice is likely to make schools expand or contract, they say all involved should be told that the characteristics that make a school appear desirable may be lost if its size changes dramatically.