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The context of the study of education in Bombay
1.
The Context of the Study of Education in Bombay
The evaluation of educational systems most often takes one of two forms, both of which are input-output oriented. Closest to the actual bureaucratic and administrative powers are the educational planners , who take an economic and statistical approach to look at numbers of students produced for given costs. Examples of this approach include Poignant (1973) for the capitalist countries and the series 'Financing Educational Systems', produced by the International Institute for Educational Planning in Paris, for some undeveloped countries. Although such studies often provide discussions of the economic basis of production, especially when under-developed countries are concerned, this is only related to ways of financing the required educational system, the inputs; the inter-relationship of institutionalised education with the production process is not analysed. On the output side, body counts are made of individuals present at various levels and of those leaving the system to provide suitable material for industrial wage labour and for more highly trained positions. The second major approach to educational evaluation, to which the name is usually applied, is that proposed by the psychologists. Here, attention centres much more on the 'qualitative aspects' of educational output: the knowledge (achievement) and the attitudes acquired by each individual. This approach has more frequently been applied in the capitalist countries than in under-developed countries, since it assumes an adequate financial and administrative machinery to be in place for the bodies to pass through, so that only their quality needs improving. Well known examples of this approach include the Coleman report (1966) and Jencks (1972) in the USA, the Plowden report (1967) and Peaker (1971) in Great Britain, Keeves (1972) in Australia, and Breton (1972) in Canada, as well as the massive international comparisons of imathematics achievement, Husen (1967), and of achievement in six other subjects published in a further nine volumes by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. With its psychological point of view, this approach depends heavily on the capitalist ideology of-individualism and usually largely ignores the social structure of the society: society exerts its main influence on the school output through the family background characteristics which individual students bring to school with them. In keeping with the behaviourist outlook, these are all quantifiable, each student having more or less of each quality. Outputs are measured by results on elaborately designed achievement tests and batteries of attitudinal questionnaires to determine what each student has gained from school. The economic planning approach relies, for its empirical data, primarily on national accounts and educational statistics supplied by the appropriate governmental bodies. Hence, this approach accepts a priori the categorisation of social reality laid down by the dominant classes of society; that these same planners may previously have played a part in defining these categories only strengthens the argument. In contrast, the psychologist approach is much more theoretical, based directly on the primary definitions of social 3
4
Evaluation in Education
reality of behaviourism which determine the construction of their instruments but which remain within the realm of the capitalist ideology of the dominant classes. The psychometrician then proceeds to take a sample of the population in order to collect the empirical data required. In spite of the methodological difference, however, both approaches are united in complementarity in their emphasis on input and output. Hence, they both take the viewpoint of the dominant classes, of wage and salaried workers for the least input of resources. Implicitly, both maintain, reinforce, and reproduce the social relations of dominance and subordination existing in capitalist society. Inevitably, both approaches ignore the dynamic process of the educational system and its inter-relations to the processes of production and distribution at the base, through its key position in the ideological super-structure of capitalist society. This is reflected in the means used to analyse the empirical data collected. Educational planners rely heavily on percentage tables, as do certain researchers applying the psychological approach to attitudes, for example, Breton (1972). Although the various percentages in a table may be compared, no necessary inter-relationships among them exist: one category of an independent variable may be dropped without altering the results. Hence, the categories need not be thought of as inter-dependent parts of a greater totality, as categories of people in society with social relations, of dominance and subordination, among them. Comparisons made are one of degree. This group is more or less privileged with respect to a given characteristic than that group. Such comparisons are built directly into the models used most commonly in the 'qualitative' approach of the psychologists. Characteristics are scaled according to the quantity that each individual has and some form of multiple regression or path analysis is applied. Inherent is the assumption that society is a united while with all individuals the same except for possession of more or less of each characteristic. From this, it follows that appropriate augmentation of the quantity of each characteristic for the less priviledged individuals will produce an egalitarian society. Ignored is the social structure, and especially the social relations among groups of people. This social structure and the social relations emanate from the vital activities of the people in society, in the production and distribution process, but manifest themselves throughout society, including in the school system. To emphasise the integrality of the educational system within the social structure, one entire chapter, Chapter 3, is devoted to the study of the social structure for the society with which we shall be concerned, that of Bombay, India. This treatment in no way is meant to be exhaustive, but only presents features of Bombay society derivable from the empirical data of the survey which are essential to the understanding of the study of the school system which follows it. Throughout the monograph, the model used, the extended logistic model described by Lindsey (1973), assumes no scaling or quantification of the variables, but does assume inter-dependence of all categories of a polytomous variable. Thus, in the first table where this model is used, Table 3.4, as in all the following such tables, inter-relationships among categories are explicit. Thus, if one social class were eliminated in Table 3.4, all of the relationships among the religions and castes, for any given remaining social class, would be altered, although relationships among social classes for any given religion and caste would not be. The converse holds if the religion and caste categories are changed. No absolute statements can be made from such a table, but only relative ones, comparing categories, e.g. the relationship between two or more social classes.
Primary Education in Bombay
5
To emphasise the importance of dynamic process in an educational SySt.em, no outputs, as dependent variables, are used, nor any alterable inputs, as independent variables (unless one is prepared to take parents' education as readily changeable). Interest centres on how mass universal education, as an integral part of advanced capitalist society, a part which is fundamental to the reproduction of such a society, has been and is being introduced into an under-developed society making the transition to capitalism under the constraining influence of imperialism. How does the school perform when capitalist social relations must be produced and not simply reproduced and maintained? In the chapter on social structure, elements of 'traditional' and of capitalist social relations are isolated and their inter-relations explored. Subsequently, these elements are related to a few key factors in the process of primary education in an attempt to determine if the existing mixture of social relations is being reproduced or if the school is helping to displace 'traditional' relations by capitalist ones. Since the classical attention to outputs in fact indicates one way in which capitalist social relations are maintained, by the continued supply of manpower prepared only for the sale of its labour power and skills, such output will not be completely ignored in the discussion, although no empirical analyses of this problem will be provided. It is pertinent to point out here that the term capitalist, as applied to social relationships and to society, should be understood throughout the test only in comparison with and in contrast to the 'traditional' Indian society with its different set of social relations. The term, capitalist, is used neither as a value judgement nor as a contrast to some future ideal society, such as, for example, socialism. Since interest is centred on this transition to capitalism, the term 'traditional' is used as a convenient shorthand for the extremely complex aspects of Indian society, which, although penetrated by capitalist social relations, are not yet necessarily dominated by them. Thus, we are studying the overlapping of two or more modes of production in the given concrete social formation which is Bombay. The overriding factor which must be continuously taken into account when studying education in an under-developed country such as India is the low participation rate, even in primary school. Mass institutionalised education is a phenomenon of capitalist society, used to produce the skills, discipline, and attitudes necessary for wage labour. Such education isolated and abstracted from the production process, is unnecessary in more traditional modes of production such as those characterised by peasant agriculture and artisanal work. Historically, in Europe and North America, such institutionalised education has been.one major means of producing the required labour force, but there education was often at first only compulsory for children working in the production process. Only when capitalist relations were firmly established was compulsory education extended to universality. India, in its transitional position between 'traditional' and capitalist society, however distorted by imperialism, is attempting a similar creation of a wage labour force through education, but introduced universally as quickly as possible. Consider Maharashtra, the state in which Bombay is located, and one of the top ranking states for education in India. By law, primary education is compulsory. Recent figures supplied to the author by Professor Suma Chitnis show that perhaps only 55-60 per cent of the age group ever attend primary school, and of those starting only one half of the boys and one quarter of the girls reach standard (grade) four, the end of lower primary school. Thus, perhaps 30 per cent of the cohort of boys and 15 per cent of girls reach the fourth year of primary school. However, Bombay is one of the most industrialised areas of
6
Evaluation in Education
India and the corresponding rates will necessarily be much higher than when the surrounding rural areas of the state are also averaged in. Hence, this study of Bombay education has been constructed in such a way as to observe social changes in primary school enrolment as efficiently as possible given that a cross sectional survey had to be employed. Details about the sampling procedure are given in Appendix 1. Two identical parallel samples were taken from consecutive standards of lower primary school. Common knowledge in Bombay says that the big loss of children occurs after the second standard, so standards 2 and 3 were chosen. Thus, standard becomes one important dependent variable. One would think that the two samples should be analysed separately (as indeed the author originally did) and the results compared, but when this is done, we find extremely few differences between the standards in social composition (which would indicate differential dropouts). Thus, we shall consider standard in the same way as the other dependent variables and combine the two samples. India is living with a legacy of education from the British colonial era, specifically designed to train an elite in British ways of thought so as to provide a liaison between the colonizers and the colonized for the extraction and transfer of surplus product. Two important characteristics of present day primary education result from this heritage: the role of English as one important medium of instruction and the existence of several parallel systems of education, most of them privately operated, often completely on a free enterprise basis. In this context, the actual academic achievement of the children may have little significance for future retention and advancement within the system, nor for success after leaving. Rather, the position of the child within the system, as well as, and linked to, the socal and economic prosition of the family, will be determinant for the future educational career. Where a child is placed within the complex educational structure, as well as when this occurs, will be crucial. Hence, three critical variables appear in the study of Bombay education: the age of the children in a given standard, the type of school in which they find themselves, and the medium of instruction in which they learn. Children in an elite Anglo-Indian private school will have extremely high probability of continuing on to university, while those in a municipal school may quite often not even complete the four standards of lower primary school. Fluency in English is essential for many white collar bureaucratic jobs, as well as being the medium of instruction in most of the universities. And being a,few years over age, often by starting school late, means even more reduced chance of continued education. All of this occurs in spite of evidence that superior teaching, and learning, along with less crowded classrooms, may more often be found within the municipal schools than in the large numbers of ordinary private schools. Thus, we have four dependent variables: the standard, the type of school, the language of instruction, and the amount the child is over age in the given standard. Each of these illuminates an aspect of the dynamic process by which the school operates, and not the end result or output. All of these factors are closely related to the social structure of Bombay, and the family's position in it. Being at a transitional stage between 'traditional' and capitalist school relations, Bombay has characteristics of both. Thus, we find social class and caste, education, wage income, and religion, as
Primary Education in Bombay
7
well as ability to speak a number of languages, especially English, as some of the variables necessary to describe the society. As a result of the complexity of this society, these social relationships must be studied in themselves before going on to see how they influence the school. Thus, we shall see how a study of education can contribute to the more general knowledge of society in an under-developed country. For example, this study can provide important insight into how education presently plays a role in the social relations of the parents, at least those with children of primary school age. From this, indications of the parents' attitudes to education, as it has served them in their own lives, may show how decisions about their children's education are influenced.
In the study of education in such a society, we are interested in differences and contrasts among the various social groups found there. The classical approach, scaling the dependent variables and applying multiple regression, is not applicable for a number of reasons. As already pointed out, it assumes that the society is a unity, with individuals spread out along one or more continua. Such is not the case, as we shall see, for distinct groups of people do exist in Bombay society. This classical approach would assume these distinctions away, without even placing them clearly in view for close scrutiny and testing; thus the empirical results are distorted to produce a preconceived unity of society. At a more technical level, another problem appears: the dependent variables do not have the normal distribution required for regression analysis. Language of instruction would even produce immense difficulties for scaling. The types of school can easily be ranked, but the assumption that adjacent types are equally different is not warranted. Only the age of the children might be taken as a continuous variable with a normal distribution. But such an hypothesis can be shown to be rejected at a very significant level in all cases. In fact, the distribution is in many casses Poisson, as will be seen in Chapter 6. Faced with these problems. we must turn to another approach to the study of the Bombay educational system, more closely related to the use of percentages mentioned above, but without its disadvantages. The model requiring the least a priori assumptions is one based on the multinomial distribution. One need only assume that the observations are all independently distributed (a questionable hypothesis in a 'traditional' society). The extension of the logistic variables which have more than two categories, provides a model which describes inter-relationships among distinct groups. For detailed development of the model, the reader is referred to Lindsey (1973). In summary, the approach applied in this monograph might be termed the sociological evaluation of an educational system, as opposed to the evaluation of the economist or the psychologist. The school is placed within and related to the social structure of the society, and given a historical perspective. Instead of treating only inputs and outputs of the system, dependent variables are chosen which demonstrate how it operates. With the emphasis on relations among categories, whether these be types of schools or groups,of people, a model must be adopted which allows study of qualitative differences and the relations among them. This need is filled by the generalisation of the logistic model used here. However, this approach is in no way intended to replace the others; given sufficient interaction among them (andthe proper conditions), they could be complementary.
8
Evaluation in Education
Within the limits of a short methodologically oriented monograph, the presentation here must necessarily be empirical, but in the context defined by explicit prior theory. Little attempt can be made to interpret the results; this will come in subsequent publications. However, it is hoped that the detailed description of at least the simpler relationships found by this method of analysis will demonstrate the usefulness of these procedures, even though it is only the first step to more complicated models within the same framework.
The Context of the Study of Education in Bombay
The evaluation of educational systems most often takes one of two forms, both of which are input-output oriented. Closest to the actual bureaucratic and administrative powers are the educational planners , who take an economic and statistical approach to look at numbers of students produced for given costs. Examples of this approach include Poignant (1973) for the capitalist countries and the series 'Financing Educational Systems', produced by the International Institute for Educational Planning in Paris, for some undeveloped countries. Although such studies often provide discussions of the economic basis of production, especially when under-developed countries are concerned, this is only related to ways of financing the required educational system, the inputs; the inter-relationship of institutionalised education with the production process is not analysed. On the output side, body counts are made of individuals present at various levels and of those leaving the system to provide suitable material for industrial wage labour and for more highly trained positions. The second major approach to educational evaluation, to which the name is usually applied, is that proposed by the psychologists. Here, attention centres much more on the 'qualitative aspects' of educational output: the knowledge (achievement) and the attitudes acquired by each individual. This approach has more frequently been applied in the capitalist countries than in under-developed countries, since it assumes an adequate financial and administrative machinery to be in place for the bodies to pass through, so that only their quality needs improving. Well known examples of this approach include the Coleman report (1966) and Jencks (1972) in the USA, the Plowden report (1967) and Peaker (1971) in Great Britain, Keeves (1972) in Australia, and Breton (1972) in Canada, as well as the massive international comparisons of imathematics achievement, Husen (1967), and of achievement in six other subjects published in a further nine volumes by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. With its psychological point of view, this approach depends heavily on the capitalist ideology of-individualism and usually largely ignores the social structure of the society: society exerts its main influence on the school output through the family background characteristics which individual students bring to school with them. In keeping with the behaviourist outlook, these are all quantifiable, each student having more or less of each quality. Outputs are measured by results on elaborately designed achievement tests and batteries of attitudinal questionnaires to determine what each student has gained from school. The economic planning approach relies, for its empirical data, primarily on national accounts and educational statistics supplied by the appropriate governmental bodies. Hence, this approach accepts a priori the categorisation of social reality laid down by the dominant classes of society; that these same planners may previously have played a part in defining these categories only strengthens the argument. In contrast, the psychologist approach is much more theoretical, based directly on the primary definitions of social 3
4
Evaluation in Education
reality of behaviourism which determine the construction of their instruments but which remain within the realm of the capitalist ideology of the dominant classes. The psychometrician then proceeds to take a sample of the population in order to collect the empirical data required. In spite of the methodological difference, however, both approaches are united in complementarity in their emphasis on input and output. Hence, they both take the viewpoint of the dominant classes, of wage and salaried workers for the least input of resources. Implicitly, both maintain, reinforce, and reproduce the social relations of dominance and subordination existing in capitalist society. Inevitably, both approaches ignore the dynamic process of the educational system and its inter-relations to the processes of production and distribution at the base, through its key position in the ideological super-structure of capitalist society. This is reflected in the means used to analyse the empirical data collected. Educational planners rely heavily on percentage tables, as do certain researchers applying the psychological approach to attitudes, for example, Breton (1972). Although the various percentages in a table may be compared, no necessary inter-relationships among them exist: one category of an independent variable may be dropped without altering the results. Hence, the categories need not be thought of as inter-dependent parts of a greater totality, as categories of people in society with social relations, of dominance and subordination, among them. Comparisons made are one of degree. This group is more or less privileged with respect to a given characteristic than that group. Such comparisons are built directly into the models used most commonly in the 'qualitative' approach of the psychologists. Characteristics are scaled according to the quantity that each individual has and some form of multiple regression or path analysis is applied. Inherent is the assumption that society is a united while with all individuals the same except for possession of more or less of each characteristic. From this, it follows that appropriate augmentation of the quantity of each characteristic for the less priviledged individuals will produce an egalitarian society. Ignored is the social structure, and especially the social relations among groups of people. This social structure and the social relations emanate from the vital activities of the people in society, in the production and distribution process, but manifest themselves throughout society, including in the school system. To emphasise the integrality of the educational system within the social structure, one entire chapter, Chapter 3, is devoted to the study of the social structure for the society with which we shall be concerned, that of Bombay, India. This treatment in no way is meant to be exhaustive, but only presents features of Bombay society derivable from the empirical data of the survey which are essential to the understanding of the study of the school system which follows it. Throughout the monograph, the model used, the extended logistic model described by Lindsey (1973), assumes no scaling or quantification of the variables, but does assume inter-dependence of all categories of a polytomous variable. Thus, in the first table where this model is used, Table 3.4, as in all the following such tables, inter-relationships among categories are explicit. Thus, if one social class were eliminated in Table 3.4, all of the relationships among the religions and castes, for any given remaining social class, would be altered, although relationships among social classes for any given religion and caste would not be. The converse holds if the religion and caste categories are changed. No absolute statements can be made from such a table, but only relative ones, comparing categories, e.g. the relationship between two or more social classes.
Primary Education in Bombay
5
To emphasise the importance of dynamic process in an educational SySt.em, no outputs, as dependent variables, are used, nor any alterable inputs, as independent variables (unless one is prepared to take parents' education as readily changeable). Interest centres on how mass universal education, as an integral part of advanced capitalist society, a part which is fundamental to the reproduction of such a society, has been and is being introduced into an under-developed society making the transition to capitalism under the constraining influence of imperialism. How does the school perform when capitalist social relations must be produced and not simply reproduced and maintained? In the chapter on social structure, elements of 'traditional' and of capitalist social relations are isolated and their inter-relations explored. Subsequently, these elements are related to a few key factors in the process of primary education in an attempt to determine if the existing mixture of social relations is being reproduced or if the school is helping to displace 'traditional' relations by capitalist ones. Since the classical attention to outputs in fact indicates one way in which capitalist social relations are maintained, by the continued supply of manpower prepared only for the sale of its labour power and skills, such output will not be completely ignored in the discussion, although no empirical analyses of this problem will be provided. It is pertinent to point out here that the term capitalist, as applied to social relationships and to society, should be understood throughout the test only in comparison with and in contrast to the 'traditional' Indian society with its different set of social relations. The term, capitalist, is used neither as a value judgement nor as a contrast to some future ideal society, such as, for example, socialism. Since interest is centred on this transition to capitalism, the term 'traditional' is used as a convenient shorthand for the extremely complex aspects of Indian society, which, although penetrated by capitalist social relations, are not yet necessarily dominated by them. Thus, we are studying the overlapping of two or more modes of production in the given concrete social formation which is Bombay. The overriding factor which must be continuously taken into account when studying education in an under-developed country such as India is the low participation rate, even in primary school. Mass institutionalised education is a phenomenon of capitalist society, used to produce the skills, discipline, and attitudes necessary for wage labour. Such education isolated and abstracted from the production process, is unnecessary in more traditional modes of production such as those characterised by peasant agriculture and artisanal work. Historically, in Europe and North America, such institutionalised education has been.one major means of producing the required labour force, but there education was often at first only compulsory for children working in the production process. Only when capitalist relations were firmly established was compulsory education extended to universality. India, in its transitional position between 'traditional' and capitalist society, however distorted by imperialism, is attempting a similar creation of a wage labour force through education, but introduced universally as quickly as possible. Consider Maharashtra, the state in which Bombay is located, and one of the top ranking states for education in India. By law, primary education is compulsory. Recent figures supplied to the author by Professor Suma Chitnis show that perhaps only 55-60 per cent of the age group ever attend primary school, and of those starting only one half of the boys and one quarter of the girls reach standard (grade) four, the end of lower primary school. Thus, perhaps 30 per cent of the cohort of boys and 15 per cent of girls reach the fourth year of primary school. However, Bombay is one of the most industrialised areas of
6
Evaluation in Education
India and the corresponding rates will necessarily be much higher than when the surrounding rural areas of the state are also averaged in. Hence, this study of Bombay education has been constructed in such a way as to observe social changes in primary school enrolment as efficiently as possible given that a cross sectional survey had to be employed. Details about the sampling procedure are given in Appendix 1. Two identical parallel samples were taken from consecutive standards of lower primary school. Common knowledge in Bombay says that the big loss of children occurs after the second standard, so standards 2 and 3 were chosen. Thus, standard becomes one important dependent variable. One would think that the two samples should be analysed separately (as indeed the author originally did) and the results compared, but when this is done, we find extremely few differences between the standards in social composition (which would indicate differential dropouts). Thus, we shall consider standard in the same way as the other dependent variables and combine the two samples. India is living with a legacy of education from the British colonial era, specifically designed to train an elite in British ways of thought so as to provide a liaison between the colonizers and the colonized for the extraction and transfer of surplus product. Two important characteristics of present day primary education result from this heritage: the role of English as one important medium of instruction and the existence of several parallel systems of education, most of them privately operated, often completely on a free enterprise basis. In this context, the actual academic achievement of the children may have little significance for future retention and advancement within the system, nor for success after leaving. Rather, the position of the child within the system, as well as, and linked to, the socal and economic prosition of the family, will be determinant for the future educational career. Where a child is placed within the complex educational structure, as well as when this occurs, will be crucial. Hence, three critical variables appear in the study of Bombay education: the age of the children in a given standard, the type of school in which they find themselves, and the medium of instruction in which they learn. Children in an elite Anglo-Indian private school will have extremely high probability of continuing on to university, while those in a municipal school may quite often not even complete the four standards of lower primary school. Fluency in English is essential for many white collar bureaucratic jobs, as well as being the medium of instruction in most of the universities. And being a,few years over age, often by starting school late, means even more reduced chance of continued education. All of this occurs in spite of evidence that superior teaching, and learning, along with less crowded classrooms, may more often be found within the municipal schools than in the large numbers of ordinary private schools. Thus, we have four dependent variables: the standard, the type of school, the language of instruction, and the amount the child is over age in the given standard. Each of these illuminates an aspect of the dynamic process by which the school operates, and not the end result or output. All of these factors are closely related to the social structure of Bombay, and the family's position in it. Being at a transitional stage between 'traditional' and capitalist school relations, Bombay has characteristics of both. Thus, we find social class and caste, education, wage income, and religion, as
Primary Education in Bombay
7
well as ability to speak a number of languages, especially English, as some of the variables necessary to describe the society. As a result of the complexity of this society, these social relationships must be studied in themselves before going on to see how they influence the school. Thus, we shall see how a study of education can contribute to the more general knowledge of society in an under-developed country. For example, this study can provide important insight into how education presently plays a role in the social relations of the parents, at least those with children of primary school age. From this, indications of the parents' attitudes to education, as it has served them in their own lives, may show how decisions about their children's education are influenced.
In the study of education in such a society, we are interested in differences and contrasts among the various social groups found there. The classical approach, scaling the dependent variables and applying multiple regression, is not applicable for a number of reasons. As already pointed out, it assumes that the society is a unity, with individuals spread out along one or more continua. Such is not the case, as we shall see, for distinct groups of people do exist in Bombay society. This classical approach would assume these distinctions away, without even placing them clearly in view for close scrutiny and testing; thus the empirical results are distorted to produce a preconceived unity of society. At a more technical level, another problem appears: the dependent variables do not have the normal distribution required for regression analysis. Language of instruction would even produce immense difficulties for scaling. The types of school can easily be ranked, but the assumption that adjacent types are equally different is not warranted. Only the age of the children might be taken as a continuous variable with a normal distribution. But such an hypothesis can be shown to be rejected at a very significant level in all cases. In fact, the distribution is in many casses Poisson, as will be seen in Chapter 6. Faced with these problems. we must turn to another approach to the study of the Bombay educational system, more closely related to the use of percentages mentioned above, but without its disadvantages. The model requiring the least a priori assumptions is one based on the multinomial distribution. One need only assume that the observations are all independently distributed (a questionable hypothesis in a 'traditional' society). The extension of the logistic variables which have more than two categories, provides a model which describes inter-relationships among distinct groups. For detailed development of the model, the reader is referred to Lindsey (1973). In summary, the approach applied in this monograph might be termed the sociological evaluation of an educational system, as opposed to the evaluation of the economist or the psychologist. The school is placed within and related to the social structure of the society, and given a historical perspective. Instead of treating only inputs and outputs of the system, dependent variables are chosen which demonstrate how it operates. With the emphasis on relations among categories, whether these be types of schools or groups,of people, a model must be adopted which allows study of qualitative differences and the relations among them. This need is filled by the generalisation of the logistic model used here. However, this approach is in no way intended to replace the others; given sufficient interaction among them (andthe proper conditions), they could be complementary.
8
Evaluation in Education
Within the limits of a short methodologically oriented monograph, the presentation here must necessarily be empirical, but in the context defined by explicit prior theory. Little attempt can be made to interpret the results; this will come in subsequent publications. However, it is hoped that the detailed description of at least the simpler relationships found by this method of analysis will demonstrate the usefulness of these procedures, even though it is only the first step to more complicated models within the same framework.