/SES gradient can be explained by differential performance at second level which also explains the gap between the sexes. Students … from white collar backgrounds do significantly better in their final second level exams than the children of blue …

for low and high ability students and that important insights are lost by focusing on the conditional mean. The … factors may affect where students go and what they study. …

to low socioeconomic status (SES) students using a natural experiment which exploits the time variation in the expansion … treatment is based on SES rather than ethnicity. Evaluating the effectiveness of programs targeting disadvantaged students in … and final year graduation rates, with the impact often stronger for higher ability students. We find similar patterns of …