The socioeconomic attainment gap, or the average difference in performance
between pupils from relatively affluent backgrounds and pupils
from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds, is a major social and educational
policy challenge.
Despite recent success in addressing the issue, this gap is still pronounced
in Germany and England, where, at age 15, advantaged students score
higher on the international PISA (Programme for International Student
Assessment, 2012) exam, on average, than their disadvantaged counterparts.
This difference is equivalent to roughly one year of schooling
(OECD 2013b, 2013c).
Educational disadvantage is a complex issue with multiple and often mutually
reinforcing drivers, making it a challenging problem to understand
and address. In both Germany and elsewhere, initiatives are generally
focused on structural provision such as extending the length of the school
day or early years’ education provision. We do not suggest replacing any
of these initiatives wholesale but improving and complementing them
through behavioural insight, to provide a fresh perspective on existing
practice that potentially offers scientifically grounded and relatively lowcost
interventions with an aim of improving pupil performance across the
board, but especially among economically disadvantaged pupils.
Behavioural science principally comprises behavioural economics and
social psychology, but is also informed by a variety of other disciplines.
The core insight from this perspective is that our common sense notion of
what influences our behaviour is often significantly at odds with experimental
evidence. While much of policy and practice is premised on the
idea that behaviour is based on rational choices by autonomous individuals,
research indicates that most of our behaviour is socially influenced
and happens automatically, often triggered by environmental cues.
We suggest that there are several related reasons why the application of
behavioural insight to educational policy and practice is important:
Perhaps most importantly, behavioural science may shed light on effective
teaching and learning processes. As a school system such as Germany’s
moves along its school improvement journey, propelled by policy and
infrastructure changes, from ‘poor’ and ‘fair’ towards ‘good’, the policies
and initiatives needed to sustain that improvement and move up to
the next level of ‘great’ or even ‘excellent’ performance should focus in
greater detail on the nature and quality of teaching and learning processes.
We believe that the behavioural insights reviewed in this report go
some way to improving these processes through a better understanding of
how effort, learning enjoyment, resilience, expectations, and evaluations
are influenced in ways not traditionally recognised.