We provide estimates for the effect of attending a Faith school on educational achievement using a census of primary school pupils in England. We argue that there are no credible instruments for Faith school attendance in this context. Instead, we partially control for selection into religious...

Although school autonomy is often advocated as a way to improve student achievement, many countries are experiencing a counterbalancing trend: the emergence of 'chains' that bind schools together into structures with varying degrees of centralization. Despite their prominence, no evidence exists...

Using a natural experiment designed by the Italian national test administrator (INVALSI) to monitor test procedures in Italian primary schools, this paper shows that the presence of an external examiner who monitors test procedures has both a direct and an indirect effect on the measured...

We use a natural experiment to show that the presence of an external examiner in standardized school tests reduces the proportion of correct answers in monitored classes by 5.5 to 8.5% - depending on the grade and the test - with respect to classes in schools with no external monitor. We find...