School performance: Institutional environment
It is often argued that greater choice of schools and thus competition between them, facilitates a better match of students to schools and encourages greater effort to improve school performance. CEP work from the early 2000s suggested however that increases in choice and competition did not increase educational standards in English schools.
Our work to evaluate the impact of the academies programme introduced from the early 2000s as a remedial policy to give struggling secondary schools greatly increased autonomy showed that the policy was effective in improving student performance. But, the mass expansion of academies from 2010 when conversion was available to all schools, led to no demonstrable improvement in performance over the schools from which they converted. Nor did we find evidence to support claims that academies' changes in head teachers and management structures, and increases in exclusion rates lead to improved pupil outcomes.
The ongoing work of the programme in this area will consider questions such as: How effective are school networks for raising attainment? How does choice and school competition influence pupils' outcomes?
Featured Work
School performance: Institutional environment publications
Jan Bietenbeck, Natalie Irmert, Linn Mattisson and Felix Weinhardt
27 February 2024
Lee Elliot Major, Emily Briant
6 October 2023
Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela
30 August 2023
Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Esme Lillywhite
28 June 2023
Cristina Borra, Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz and Almudena Sevilla
21 June 2023
Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela
20 June 2023
Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz and Almudena Sevilla
21 June 2022
Stephen Machin and Matteo Sandi
1 January 2020
Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin
1 August 2019
Andrew Eyles, Stephen Machin and Olmo Silva
1 March 2018
Stephen Machin and Matteo Sandi
25 January 2018
Andrew Eyles, Stephen Machin and Sandra McNally
1 November 2017
Jon Andrews, Natalie Perera, Andrew Eyles, Gabriel Heller Sahlgren, Stephen Machin, Matteo Sandi and Olmo Silva
1 July 2017
Andrew Eyles, Claudia Hupkau and Stephen Machin
1 August 2016
Charlotte Geay, Sandra McNally and Shqiponja Telhaj
1 August 2013