Analysis of expectations in high and low school effectiveness baccalaureate schools. Perception of the education inspectors

Abstract

Education research has proved that expectations in schools are linked to student’s performance. A set of studies corroborate their relationship with the children’s improvement in the first stages of schooling. In this study we extend the issue to Higher Secondary Education and we analyze the connections between expectations and results in Basque Country schools. To this purpose, sixteen lower effectiveness schools and sixteen higher effectiveness schools were selected taking into account their results in the University Access Exams throughout five years (2010-2014). Semi-structured interviews with the Education Inspectors in charge of those schools were conducted in order to contrast the expectations about the two extreme groups. The outcomes show that expectations in schools are still a factor linked to student results in Higher Secondary School, as it occurs at the previous stages. As a result, it can be inferred that having high expectations and transmitting them in one’s environment help immerse the education community in an important task which translates into good results.