Report on Queensland High Schools performance 2005

(Australia)

Course: Quantitative Analysis and Finance

By: Stephan Osswald

Date: November 2006

Table of Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Results  2
2.1 Hypothesis  2
2.2 Hypothesis  3
2.3 Hypothesis  3
2.4 Hypothesis  5
2.5 Hypothesis  6

3 Recommendation  7

4 Conclusion  7

Appendix  8

1 Introduction

On April 3 2006 the Queensland Studies Authority (QSA) released data on the performance of Queensland High Schools in 2005. This was the first time in twelve years that information on the performance of all Queensland High Schools was released.

This report aims to analyse the data performance of Queensland High Schools and to examine if there is an influence on the Percentage of OP eligible students with an OP 1 to 15. In this context there is a focus on the overall performance of the assessed schools. The different variables will be compared, discussed, analysed and how they relate to schools′ performance. It will be considered if there are regional distinctions based on performance, location, same sex or co-education schools. The overall performance variables will be examined through the five hypotheses:

1. Hypothesis There is a weak relationship between the eligible students with an OP 1 - 15 and the total senior certificates.
2. Hypothesis The dispersion of the students with an OP 1-15 is right skewed.
3. Hypothesis A student attending a metropolitan school is more likely to achieve an OP 1-15, than a student attending a regional school.
4. Hypothesis For a male or female student it is better to attend a same-sex school for their results.
5. Hypothesis Same-sex schools in metropolitan areas are slightly better in their performance comparing to regional schools.

2 Results

After analysing the data of the percentage of the eligible students with OP 1-15 consists of five outlier. And the data of the Total senior certificates consists of eight outliers. However the outlier does not have a large impact on the correlation result. There is a weak positive relationship of r=0.1259 (as in Appendix 1, Table 1). After removing the outliers there is a similar result of r=0.1257 (as in Appendix 1, Table 2). Thus, the outlier do not have a demonstrable effect on the data, consequently it is not necessary to remove the outliers.

2.1 Hypothesis 

There is a weak relationship between the eligible students with an OP 1 - 15 and the total senior certificates.

Without removing the outliers as aforementioned described above, total senior certificates and eligible students with an OP 1 to 15 of the sample are analysed. There is a weak positive correlation of r= 0.1432 (as in Appendix 1, Table 1) between total senior certificates and eligible students with an OP 1 to 15. This can be seen in the wide dispersion of points as per Figure 1. The line-of-best-fit indicates that the eligible students with an OP 1 to 15 generally increase as total senior certificate rise.

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