The performance of students in the Leaving Certificate is more likely to be influenced by the schools they attend than the neighbourhoods they live in, a new report suggests.
The study from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) also highlights how a child’s performance can be significantly influenced by the level of education their mother has and their social class.
Family type and the level of financial strain they live with are also factors that can lead to a child struggling to reach their full potential, the study entitled The impact of school and neighbourhood social mix on Leaving Certificate performance said.
It pointed to a need for greater State support for the most disadvantaged schools.
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Report authors Emer Smyth and Merike Darmody noted there is growing interest internationally in how school and neighbourhood contexts make a difference to academic achievement.
They said it can be difficult to disentangle school and neighbourhood effects in countries where all students in a particular area attend their local school.
The research said the level of choice among second-level schools in Ireland means it “can provide more precise estimates of school and neighbourhood effects than those available internationally”.
It highlighted stark differences in academic attainment, with a gap of over 100 Leaving Certificate points, between the children of graduate mothers and those whose mothers have Junior Cycle education or less.
[ Short absences from school linked to lower Leaving Cert grades, study findsOpens in new window ]
Even taking account of social background, students in Deis schools were found to have much lower grades than those in socially mixed schools, while those in fee-paying schools had higher grades again.
Neighbourhood characteristics also make a difference to achievement, with lower grades in areas characterised by higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage and more neighbourhood disorder.
“The findings show the importance of taking a multidimensional approach to measuring family background, as maternal education, social class, financial strain and family type all have independent effects on exam performance,” the authors said.
The social mix of the school attended and of the neighbourhood in which young people live makes a difference to their academic achievement, even taking account of their family circumstances with the study stating that the “effects are found to be cumulative, with both the primary and second-level school attended affecting grades”.
The authors said that while schools serving disadvantaged communities are provided with additional supports and resources through the Deis programme “these do not appear sufficient to bridge the gap in outcomes, at least for this cohort of young people”.
They said the findings add to a body of evidence “which suggests the need for additional supports for schools serving the most deprived communities, soon to be the basis of a Deis plus designation”.
