Researching equity and effectiveness in education: Examples from the UK and Germany

Many examples of educational research, including international comparative school achievement studies have clearly documented that school attainments and school careers of children are linked in many countries to their origins (ethnic and cultural) and the socioeconomic situation of the family they grow up in. However, the extent of the equity gap for specific student groups and explanations for it vary. As consequence, a number of longitudinal educational studies have been set up to investigate these phenomena and shed light on the question how to overcome such inequity. The current chapter first explores different definitions of equity and presents then two large, longitudinal studies conducted in England and Germany that investigate children’s development from preschool age through primary education. Both studies were set up to investigate the influences of individual child, family, home learning, preschool and primary school influences on children’s development. A core question of both studies is how (pre-)school can contribute to reducing the negative influence of early childhood disadvantage and thus potentially help reduce inequity in later educational outcomes (see Sammons, Anders and Hall, 2013 for further discussion). The Effective Provision of Pre-, Primary and Secondary Project in England (EPPSE) has tracked 3000+ children since 1996, whereas the German BiKS-study is investigating the development of around 550 children. The two studies share many similarities in their designs and methodological approaches, although there are also some important differences. Recent results of both studies are presented and discussed in terms of both the quantitative modeling strategies adopted and the interpretation of statistical findings