Contributed by: Assessment of Performance Unit (APU)
This task is one of a series of the APU surveys in Science of
pupils aged 11, 13, and 15. The responsibility for the science surveys
is shared between teams based at the University of Leeds and Chelsea
College, University of London. The surveys have been carried out
annually since 1980 and continued until 1984, after which a five
year research phase began to culminate in another full survey in
1989.
The surveys are carried out on a random sample of 11 year old pupils
in primary and middle schools and of 13 and 15 year olds in middle
and secondary schools. The sample is a stratified random sample
of schools in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland selected to allow
performances to be reported for pupils in, for instance, particular
areas of the country or types and age ranges of schools. Pupils
are then drawn at random from each school giving a total sample
of between one and two percent of the population at each age.
This sample is then subdivided to give a number of parallel subsamples
each of which is given a different test package thus allowing an
extensive testing program to be undertaken. Each year questions
equivalent to a single test lasting 20 to 30 hours are used. This
permits the questions themselves to be representative of a very
broad view of science. However, any individual pupil is only tested
for one hour and sees only a fraction of the complete test. This
survey design, known as light sampling, allows a profile report
to be produced of the performance in science of the population as
a whole rather than for an individual.
Specific technical quality data is currently unavailable for this
task.
|