'League table' information on school effectiveness in England generally relies on either a comparison of the average outcomes of pupils by school, e.g. mean exam scores, or on estimates of the average value added by each school. These approaches assume that the information parents and...

One in five children in England are recorded as having some kind of special educational need, meaning that they receive additional help in school; yet there is very little evidence of the effect of such assistance on pupil’s academic progress. This is at least partly because it is usually...

We discuss the use of fixed and random effects models in the context of educational research and set out the assumptions behind the two modelling approaches. To illustrate the issues that should be considered when choosing between these approaches, we analyse the determinants of pupil...

Parental demand for academic performance is a key element in the view that strengthening school choice will drive up school performance. In this paper we analyse what parents look for in choosing schools. We assemble a unique dataset combining survey information on parents' choices plus a rich...

Accurate estimates of the extent of ethnic parity amongst benefit claimants are very important for policymakers who provide interventions for these groups. We use new administrative data on benefit claimants in Great Britain to document differences in labour market outcomes between Ethnic...

This paper measures the extent to which the presence of religious state-funded secondary schools in England impacts on the educational experiences of pupils who attend neighbouring schools, whether through school effort induced by competition or changes in peer groups induced by sorting....

Social mobility has emerged as one of the key academic and political topics in Britain over the last decade. Although economists and sociologists disagree on whether mobility has increased or decreased, and if this is a bigger issue in the UK than other developed countries, both groups recognise...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of local labour market conditions and pupil educational attainment as primary determinants of the post-compulsory schooling decision. Design/methodology/approach: Through the specification of a nested logit model, the restrictive...

This paper assesses the relative importance of local labour market conditions and pupil educational attainment as primary determinants of the post-compulsory schooling decision. Using a nested logit model we formally incorporate the structured and sequential decision process pupils engage with....