Perceptions of key staff on the impact of school leadership on pupil outcomes in successful secondary schools in England

Gu, Qing (2017). Perceptions of key staff on the impact of school leadership on pupil outcomes in successful secondary schools in England. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-851578

Raising standards of teaching and learning in schools is a key focus of recent educational reforms. The purpose of this research is to contribute new knowledge of the complex interface between policy intentions and educational practices and outcomes through a comparative analysis of the ways in which the intended outcomes of such reforms are mediated and enacted by school leaders and teachers in a diverse range of effective and improving secondary schools in England and Hong Kong.

The research will begin with a mapping exercise of perceived challenges of current government reforms in Hong Kong and England and a secondary analysis of two existing national surveys on senior and middle leaders' perceptions of their principals' contribution to change and improvement in their schools. These analyses will inform case studies of eight successful secondary schools (four in each country) across diversified school populations in different socio-economic contexts. Pupil surveys will also be conducted to explore their views on the impact of changes (or no change) in their schools and classrooms on their motivation to learn and achieve. The research will make a distinctive contribution to knowledge of how mandated reforms are enacted in schools for the improvement of pupil outcomes.

Data description (abstract)

Key staff (i.e. senior and middle school leaders) questionnaire data were collected from 1,167 most effective and most improved secondary schools in England. The data were collected to i) identify senior and middle leaders’ perceptions of the impact of their principals on school improvement; and ii) explore a structural equation model (SEM) of school principals’ influence on change in pupil achievements.

The data were collected from a previous government funded research project on the impact of school leadership on pupil outcomes (Day et al., 2011). This ESRC project provided an opportunity for the research team to conduct more complex secondary analysis of the survey data.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Gu Qing	University of Nottingham

Contributors:

Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Armstrong Paul	University of Manchester

Sponsors:

ESRC

Grant reference:

ES/J017035/1

Topic classification:

Education

Keywords:

school leadership, school improvement, pupil academic outcomes

Project title:

Bilateral (Hong Kong): Reshaping Educational Practice for Improvement in Hong Kong and England: How Schools Mediate Government Reforms

Grant holders:

Qing Gu, Christopher Day

Project dates:

From	To
1 November 2012	30 June 2014

Date published:

25 Jun 2015 15:58

Last modified:

12 Apr 2017 10:50

Coverage and Methodology

Collection period:

Date from:	Date to:
1 November 2006	30 January 2009

Geographical area:

England

Country:

United Kingdom

Data collection method:

An analysis of national assessment and examination data sets on primary and secondary school performance was used to identify schools that were effective in their value added results (which take account of pupils’ prior attainment and background characteristics) and also showed significant improvement in raw results or stable high attainment over at least the previous three consecutive years under the leadership of the same principal. The analyses were based on relevant published data and key indicators, including both “value added” measures of pupil progress based on multilevel statistical analyses, combined with important accountability indicators such as the percentage of pupils achieving national performance benchmarks in Key Stage 2 assessments (age 11), or at Key Stage 4 in public GCSE examinations (age 16). Approximately a third of the secondary (37 per cent) schools in England for which national data were available were classified as meeting our criteria as more effective/improved in terms of value added performance and changes in pupil attainment over a course of three years.

The questionnaire survey was conducted for principals and key staff (fiver per school at secondary level) amongst the sample schools. The response rate for secondary key staff at the questionnaire/individual level was 20% and at the school level was 34%.

We are the data owners of this previously government funded research project. Professor Christopher Day was the Principal Investigator of the project and I was leading the survey strand with Professor Pam Sammons who was an External Consultant for this ESRC project.

Observation unit:

Organization

Kind of data:

Numeric

Type of data:

UK survey data

Resource language:

English

Access and Administration

Data sourcing, processing and preparation:

This survey data were collected from a previous research project on which this current project was built. Descriptive analyse were conducted and published as outputs of the previous project. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling with this survey on this project and linked the SEM model to school level data on pupil academic outcomes. Data analysis procedures: 1) In order to explore the relationships between leadership, school process and changes in pupil outcomes, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to investigate the possible structures underpinning the questionnaire data from principals and to test theoretical models about the extent to which leadership characteristic and practices identified in the earlier literature review (Leithwood et al., 2006) could be confirmed from the sample of effective and improved schools in England. 2) Results showed that the underlying leadership factors identified for the secondary key staff survey largely accord with the conclusions of Leithwood et al.’s (2006) literature review and those of the secondary principal survey (Day et al., 2011). 3) After deletion of missing data, the structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis was then conducted. The development of the models draws on but extends the cross-sectional approach that predicts student outcomes adopted in the earlier Leadership and Organisational Learning study in Australia by Silins and Mulford (2004) – as the factors identified in this research in the English context relate to improvement in school performance (as measured by change in student outcomes and progress). 4) Results for the secondary key staff and principal samples showed strong similarities. The SEM models demonstrate that the leadership constructs identified in the literature operate in ways in which we hypothesised in relation to influencing directly and indirectly a range of school and classroom processes that in turn predicted changes (improvements) in schools’ academic performance. These dynamic, empirically-driven models present new results on the leadership of a large sample of effective and improving schools in England and thus add to school improvement and leadership theories.

Rights owners: