Replication studies in education are relatively rare. Of the few which are conducted, many are conceptual rather than direct replications. With so few replication studies, and many of those that are attempted producing null results, the scientific status of the evidence base for educational policy and practice is in question. Replicating Makel and Plucker’s review of the education replication literature, conducted in 2014, this paper presents a mapping review looking at rates of replication in education research from 2011 to 2020. We provide an overview of the number of replication studies by replication type, year, outcome, authorship, and journal. Our results are consistent with those of Makel and Plucker, revealing very low but gradually increasing rates of replication study in education. We discuss the role of replication in producing a robust and trustworthy evidence base for policy and practice, and some of the challenges in operationalising definitions of replication we encountered.

This paper presents findings from an exploratory review of the literature on school approaches and current issues within European schools in relation to migrant children with Special Educational Needs (SEN). 13 papers were identified and analysed and three key ‘journeys’ reflecting the developing and negotiated nature of family and school experiences and practices were identified: the family journey, the school journey and the journey into SEN. The findings emphasise the importance of professionals acknowledging cultural and individual diversity, not only by considering the cultural backgrounds of migrants, but also by critically understanding their own cultural framework and how they use it in their work with families. The review provides a useful reference for future research in this area and for professionals working with diverse communities, by highlighting common practices to be aware of, and by providing evidence that more training is needed of school staff in how to manage and understand migration and diversity in relation to children with SEN.

Initial and continuing teacher education are increasingly making use of remote and blended modes of education. Conducted in the summer of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, this rapid review brings together literature and evidence to inform planning for remote and blended teacher education during restrictions in face-to-face teaching activity. The review consists of three main parts: first, a descriptive framework of modes of remote and blended teacher education; second, an exploratory review of the affordances and limitations of remote and blended approaches connecting the literature on effective teacher education with reviews of remote and blended approaches; third, a rapid review of evidence on the efficacy of remote and blended approaches, including of a small number of studies comparing these to face-to-face equivalents. We conclude that remote and blended teacher education is likely to become an increasingly important part of the teacher education landscape and there are plausible theoretical reasons suggesting that it can be effective with suitable design. However, we find too few studies presenting robust evidence to enable firm conclusions to be drawn on the relative effectiveness of modes and approaches. The review provides a foundation for further research and practice in this area.

Value‐added ‘Progress’ measures are to be introduced for all English schools in 2016 as ‘headline’ measures of school performance. This move comes despite research highlighting high levels of instability in value‐added measures and concerns about the omission of contextual variables in the planned measure. This article studies the impact of disregarding contextual factors, the stability of school scores across time and the consistency of value‐added performance for different cohorts within schools at a given point in time. The first two analyses replicate and extend previous studies using current data, confirming concerns about intake biases and showing that both secondary and primary level value‐added measures exhibit worrying levels of instability. The third analysis goes further by examining whether instability across time is likely to stem from differences between cohorts and whether measures based on a single cohort reflect school performance more generally. Combined, these analyses suggest a general problem of imprecision within value‐added estimates and that current policy use of value‐added is unjustified. Published school performance measures are likely to be profoundly misleading, in particular for those unfamiliar with the level of uncertainty in the estimates. The article closes by considering whether value‐added measures could and should be used by policy‐makers as measures of school performance.

In October 2015 the Department for Education (DfE) permitted a grammar school in Tonbridge, Kent, to open up an annexe in Sevenoaks, 10 miles away. Amidst claims that the annexe was essentially a new grammar school, the decision reignited an old debate about the value of academically-selective “grammar” schools in England. The intensity of feeling is perhaps surprising given that all but a small number of grammar schools have long been replaced by mixed-ability “comprehensive” schools. Yet, the matter taps into longstanding debates around standards, social mobility, opportunity and accessibility. A resurgence of these discussions is now playing out in a changed political and educational landscape characterised by school autonomy, diversity of provision and school choice. This article describes the key shifts that have taken place in English school organisation and policy thinking since the establishment of the tripartite system and the recent emergence of new roles and opportunities for grammar schools. This is followed by a review of the evidence on the effectiveness and wider social impact of selective education. The article concludes by reframing the grammar school debate in light of the evidence and the current system, arguing that issues around system performance and social segregation need to be examined more broadly and that the most fruitful debates to be had are around admissions and accountability mechanisms rather than structures and school types.

A compositional effect is when pupil attainment is associated with the characteristics of their peers, over and above their own individual characteristics. Pupils at academically selective schools, for example, tend to out-perform similar-ability pupils who are educated with mixed-ability peers. Previous methodological studies however have shown that ‘phantom’ compositional effects can arise purely from measurement error. Through simulations using English National Pupil Database data, this paper demonstrates that moderate rates of measurement error in baseline scores can produce a systemic bias in value-added (‘Progress’) scores that favours higher ability pupils. This bias is large enough to explain the ostensibly superior performance of selective ‘grammar’ schools that is seen in the English data and create an appreciable bias across the school performance distribution. This paper describes how such biases can arise from ‘regression attenuation’ and discusses the more general methodological implications of the results. The paper concludes that the consequences of baseline measurement error on school value-added scores is greatly mitigated by controls for school-level prior attainment, but that the English ‘Progress’ value-added measures, as they do not control for prior attainment at school-level, are seriously biased and that the observed ‘grammar school effect’ is likely to be largely or wholly spurious.