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Estimating the Impact of the Specialist Schools Programme on Secondary School Examination Results in England *
Author(s) -
Taylor Jim
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
oxford bulletin of economics and statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.131
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1468-0084
pISSN - 0305-9049
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0084.2007.00446.x
Subject(s) - pupil , new england , panel data , demographic economics , medical education , mathematics education , geography , psychology , optometry , medicine , political science , economics , econometrics , neuroscience , politics , law
This paper investigates the impact of the specialist schools programme in England on examination performance at age 16. Two approaches are used. The first uses pupil‐level data from the 2003 National Pupil Database. The second uses panel data methods and is based on time‐series data for secondary schools during 1992–2003. The paper also investigates the distributional consequences of the specialist schools programme. Specialist schools perform marginally better than their non‐specialist counterparts (especially in science, business studies and technology) but by much less than is indicated by previous studies. The programme does not appear to have had adverse distributional consequences.