The Educational Priority School

S ummary . The study was designed to establish, on a regional basis, the validity of a set of measures of social handicap as predictive of educational backwardness and to identify the characteristics of those schools which are most effectively compensatory in adverse social conditions. Backwardness was defined in relation to scores on standardised intellectual tests for 7‐year‐old and 10‐year‐old children attending 115 Northern Ireland primary schools. The proportion of backwardness was then predicted from thirteen demographic variables, commonly used in describing educational priority areas, by the application of step‐wise multiple regression analysis. Parental unemployment and the occupational status of the school neighbourhood emerged as the strongest pointers to educational backwardness. The social variables predicted backwardness least accurately in smaller, less well equipped and rural schools. The schools which were most effectively compensatory tended to be urban, to have less physically adequate classrooms, female principals, and a higher proportion of graduate‐trained teachers

Backwardness · Developmental psychology · Economic growth · Neighbourhood (mathematics) · Sociology · Demography · Education Systems and Policy · Psychology