The distributional impact of increased school resources: the Specialist Schools Initiative and the Excellence in Cities Programme

This paper estimates the impact of two flagship education policies, the Specialist Schools initiative and the Excellence in Cities programme, on the attainment of secondary school pupils in England. The focus is on their relative impact across gender, ethnic and socio-economic groups. Using pupil-level data, we find, first, that the EiC programme has been substantially more effective than the specialist schools initiative in raising the attainment of ethnic minority pupils, particularly Asians. Second, the Specialist Schools initiative has favoured pupils from economically advantaged families whereas the EiC programme has been more effective in raising the attainment of pupils from poor families. Third, both policies have been more effective for girls than for boys, thereby contributing to the educational gender gap.