British educational trajectories from school to university: evaluating quantitative evidence in policy formulation and justification
本文通过分析英国教育数据，揭示政府基于有缺陷的数据分析推行意识形态驱动的政策，并利用新方法证明许多优秀学生因缺乏高中后两年学业数据而未被顶尖大学录取。
The increasing volume of available ‘big data’ contains great potential for public policy to be evidence-based – as long as they are properly analysed and fully appreciated. This paper examines a case where that did not happen, and as a consequence an ideological-driven policy change was supported by a poor analysis of the available data. Using the same data, analyses employing a novel procedure falsify the government’s arguments: many well-qualified students for courses in the country’s leading universities may not be offered places there in the absence of data on their academic progress during their two years of post-secondary education.