Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Ian Schagen, who was known for his significant contributions to the analysis of statistical data relating to education, died on 20 January 2025, aged 77. Ian was born in 1947 in Zaandam, the Netherlands, and moved to England when he was 5 years old. He gained his degree in Natural Sciences and Mathematics from Cambridge in 1968. After graduating from Cambridge, he worked for BP and was one of a team who identified a major oil field by desk analysis of geological survey data. He gained an MSc in Statistics with distinction from Birkbeck University of London in 1974. After leaving BP in 1977, he became a lecturer in Statistics at Loughborough University, where he also achieved his PhD in Statistics. Though successful there, in 1986, the family decided to move South in connection with the work of his wife Sandie (nee Kirby), who was training as a church minister. As a result, the Statistics Department at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) had the good fortune to be able to recruit him. He played an important part in helping restore the academic reputation of the NFER after the previous controversies over the Assessment of Performance Unit. Ian was speedy and accurate in carrying out statistical analyses, and his extrovert personality, communication skills, and ability to grasp the requirements of a project meant that he was very successful in this role. One of his favourite sayings to deal with excessive demands was to ask ‘Do you want it now, or do you want it right?’ These abilities led to him eventually being appointed Head of Statistics in 1996. In addition to this role, he was also involved more directly in other projects, for example the research papers ‘A method for the age standardisation of test scores’ (1990), ‘Beyond league tables. How modern statistical methods can give a truer picture of the effects of schools’, (1991) and ‘Problems in measuring the reliability of National Curriculum assessment in England and Wales’ (1993). He was the author or co-author of a large number of books and learned papers, including ‘But what does it mean: the use of effect sizes in educational research’. This detailed the proceedings of a seminar, jointly organized by the Institute of Education, University of London and NFER in 2003 on ‘effect sizes’, a way of presenting the relationships between background factors and outcomes which can make them easier to compare and understand. This was the period when school performance league tables were first introduced. It was widely agreed in the statistical community that these were of very little value as a measure of school performance since they were mainly a function of the characteristics of the schools’ intakes. To help deal with this problem, in 1992, the NFER introduced a subscription service programme for schools, Quantitative Analysis for Self-Evaluation. This aimed to provide schools with reports to help them evaluate their performance, taking into consideration pupils’ prior attainment and background. Ian played a central role in analysing the data and explaining the meaning of the results, as well as emphasizing the limits of any inferences. After leaving the NFER in 2008, he relocated to New Zealand to take up the post of Chief Research Analyst in the Research Division of the Ministry of Education, until his retirement in 2010. In 2011/2012, he and Sandie spent a year working in Ghana as volunteer consultants with Omega Schools, helping to develop systems for analysing and reporting assessment data. He published a book ‘Obrunni!: A Year in Ghana’, describing the challenges of improving the assessment systems and teaching materials for those schools, as well as the highs and lows of living in Africa. He later joined with former senior NFER colleagues to form ERA—Educational Research and Analysis as Chief Finance Officer. ERA was a successful small consultancy carrying out work for a wide range of clients. As well as consultancy work, he and Sandie were renowned for the huge distances they travelled exploring and sightseeing in a worldwide selection of countries, on every continent except Antarctica. He also had a substantial impact in the field of English grammar relating to statistics. He wrote to RSS News and Notes, arguing that, based on English grammar rules, ‘data’, as a mass noun, took a singular verb, and the fact that the original word ‘data’ was plural was not relevant since we were communicating in English, not Latin. He had a highly irreverent sense of humour and was delighted when it turned out that this letter provoked the largest response to any communication to this publication. Outside of work, Ian’s main interests were photography and oil painting. He published seven science fiction books. Also, he and Sandie published an account of their journey retracing the steps of his father's amazing escape on foot from the Nazis in wartime Holland over the Pyrenees to Spain (‘A Wartime Journey Revisited’). He had three children and four grandchildren, and divided his time between the UK, the U.S., and travelling. He and his wife had a winter base in Sarasota, Florida, where he was a member of the Sarasota Writers’ Group. He very much enjoyed large and cheerful get-togethers of his extended family.
Author: Dougal Hutchison
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4409200437