CEE DP 103 School Quality, Child Wellbeing and Parents’ Satisfaction

The Centre for the Economics of Education is an independent research centre funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. The views expressed in this work are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the DCSF. All errors and omissions remain the authors. Executive Summary Researchers in economics of education conventionally assume that parents choose schools for their high academic performance. This view has some support from " revealed preference " evidence based on local house prices. However, anecdotal evidence and common sense suggest that school quality is not one-dimensional and that parents and children are concerned about other school factors related to pupil happiness and enjoyment of their learning environment. Recently, broader considerations of pupil wellbeing have begun to take hold in the policy debate both in the UK and internationally. In England, the " Every Child Matters " (ECM) initiative has driven important changes in educational services in order to support five key outcomes for children and young people identified by the ECM initiative, namely to " be healthy " , to " stay safe " , to " enjoy and achieve " , to " make a positive contribution " and to " achieve economic wellbeing ". The question then arises as to whether these kinds of objectives can be met in the current school context, where policy makers and parents tend to evaluate schools " excellence on the basis of academic achievement and pupils " test scores. With these issues in mind, we consider whether parental perceptions of school quality are based on academic standards and aligned with the wellbeing of the children. We examine children " s attitudes towards their school along three dimensions: general happiness, relationships with teachers and intellectual stimulation. In parallel, we consider parents " judgement of overall school quality, and their views on teachers " relationships with their child and the progress that their child is making at school. Our main goal is to answer two related research questions, that is: To what extent are attitudes and experiences, amongst pupils and their parents, linked to standard test-score based measures of academic performance? To what extent are parents " perceptions of school quality linked to their children " s happiness and enjoyment of school? To do so, we use direct information on stated perceptions in the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England (LSYPE) matched to UK …