I am also going to investigate any possible reasons for a changing pattern and attempt to put these within the nation context, effecting educational attainment.
Lastly, I want to research how the perceptions of students and their parents in Harlow, based on the standard of secondary education, reflect the statistical analysis. My hypothesis will explore the standards of attainment and how they have risen over the last ten years, and how many parents and pupils believe they haven't and regard Harlow secondary education as 'second best'. It is apparent that perhaps people have the incorrect perceptions of education in this town.
Sociological methods I will use will involve both primary and secondary sources, to collect my evidence. The first part of my investigation will rely entirely on collection data from local sources, that of schools in the area, and national sources, using the internet, establishing the patterns of attainment. Examples include, Are girls attaining better than boys? Do boys attain faster than girls? Does a particular ethnic group attain better? Is a specific school in Harlow performing better than others?
Once I have completed that part of my research, I am going to investigate the possible reasons for the patterns I am identifying. I will create a questionnaire for people in the local area to complete, of course, this will rely heavily on primary sources. For this, there are many techniques I can use and I will have decide what will be most relevent for my research. I will cover this in Section one.
Throughout Section two, I present the factors effecting educational attainment that sociologists, before, have covered. This will count as a base for my own further investigation.
