Melanie Butler explains the data behind the rankings
The data for the EL Gazette UK Rankings comes from the summary statements of British Council inspection reports. These statements appear on the full report of every language centre. These can be found on the British Council website www.britishcouncil.org/education/accreditation/centres
The statement gives basic details about the centre, for example:
“This private language school offers courses in general English for adults (18+)”.
Then it lists any area inspected where a centre has received a strength:
“Strengths were noted in the areas of staff management, academic staff profile, academic management, teaching and leisure opportunities.”
The statement also lists areas which need improvement:
“The inspection report noted a need for improvement in the area of publicity.”
Where a centre is deemed by inspectors to have too many needs for improvement or to have failed an area entirely, its accreditation is put under review. Until it is reinspected its summary statement reads:
“The summary statement has been withdrawn.”
How do we calculate the scores?
Every area of strength, and every need for improvement for each centre is entered into our database. The total number of needs for improvement are subtracted from the total for areas of strength to calculate the ‘net areas of strength’.
However, we cannot rank on net areas of strengths alone. While all centres are inspected in 14 areas, the 90 per cent who take under18s are inspected in one extra area: care of under 18s.
So, an adult school like LSI Portsmouth can only score a maximum 14 areas of strength while a school with a minimum age of 16, like Wimbledon School of English, can score fifteen. But they both get a perfect score.
The answer may seem to be simple, just divide the net strengths by the maximum number of areas applicable and work out the percentage.
But there’s a problem. Four per cent of schools have more needs for improvements than strengths. A centre enrolling students aged 16+ with two areas which need improvement and one area of strength for example scores -2 net strengths. Expressed as a percentage that is -6.666 per cent.
This is not only bizarre, it’s also not fair. These centres have passed their inspection.
So, we use a range modifier, the number four, which gives a net score of at least one added to the net areas of strength. We then divide the modified score by the total maximum areas of strength applicable and report the results as marks out of ten.
Reporting the rankings
Finally, in this issue we report the rankings in percentiles. So the top four schools, all of which have a perfect score, are ranked as the top one per cent and the next group of centres are all in the top two per cent.
Why are we doing that? Well, a large number of centres all achieve the same score and learning that 12 operators are all ranked joint 59th doesn’t give you a clear picture of their position.
We hope you agree.
