Chapter 14for family background. Once again, the effect of the school
is remarkable on all three outcomes and at both ages.
We can again examine the effect of the characteristics of
the school (see Table 14.4). At these younger ages, there is
no clear advantage intellectually or emotionally from larger
schools. And there is absolutely no evidence in favor of
smaller class sizes— a clear finding at both age 11 and age 8.
The Effects of Individual Teachers
What can we say about the effect of the individual teacher?
In primary schools (unlike secondary) each child has basi-
cally only one teacher per year. And that is why our analysis
of teachers relates to primary school teachers only.
Researchers and policy makers agree on the fact that
teachers are important.^5 The standard approach is to use
teacher value- added measures, where children’s scores are
explained by their previous scores, their parents’ characteris-
tics, the school’s characteristics, and the name of the teacher.
It is then possible to calculate the standard deviation of
these value- added teacher scores relative to the overall stan-
dard deviation of the outcome across all children. This gives
Table 14.3. How children’s outcomes at 8 and 11 are affected by
primary school attended (ALSPAC) (β- coefficients)Emotional Behavioral Intellectual
At age 11 0.24 (.01) 0.19 (.01) 0.27 (.01)
At age 8 0.19 (.01) 0.20 (.01) 0.30 (.01)