Pupil mobility, attainment and progress during Key Stage 1: a study in cautious interpretation

This article explores the association between pupil mobility and attainment in national end of Key Stage 1 (KS1) tests for over 6000 pupils in an English urban education authority. The results indicate that pupil mobility during the early years is associated with significantly lower levels of pupil attainment in reading, writing and mathematics tests at age 7. However, mobile pupils are more likely than stable pupils to be entitled to free school meals, to have English as an additional language, to require higher levels of support in learning English, to have identified and more severe special educational needs and to have higher levels of absence. When the relative impact of these factors is considered, the effect of mobility, while still statistically significant, is substantially reduced. When pupil's baseline assessment results are also included in order to assess educational progress between the age of 4 and 7 years, mobility has a significant effect only on progress in mathematics, and even here the impact is low relative to other pupil background factors. The article concludes that the direct effect of mobility on pupil attainment is likely to be small. However, the implications of mobility for school and classroom management, planning and resourcing are substantial. Examples of good practice and implications for policy are discussed