Results

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Absence rates will stay high until the Covid generation leaves school

School absences increased massively during the Covid-19 pandemic and remain at higher levels. Our new research (funded by the Nuffield Foundation) shows that the high level of pupil absence in England can be attributed t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The organizational economics of school chains

We use the insights of firms' organizational economics to study school chains' organization. We match information on decentralization of activities for approximately 400 chains and 2,000 schools in England to student and...Read more...

External publication

A generation at risk: rebalancing education in the post-pandemic era

We present for the first time a model of children's evolving socio-emotional and cognitive skills to assess how the educational and lifetime prospects of children of different ages, genders and socio-economic backgrounds...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Autonomous schools, achievement and segregation

We study whether autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools, affect student achievement and school segregation across 15 countries over 16 years. Our trip...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics :

Class Rank and Long-Run Outcomes

This paper considers an unavoidable feature of the school environment, class rank. What are the long-run effects of a student's ordinal rank in elementary school? Using administrative data on all public-school students i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Free to improve? The impact of free school attendance in England

We investigate the impact of attending a free school in England - that is, a new start-up school that enjoys considerable autonomy while remaining in the state sector. We analyse the effects of two secondary free schools...Read more...

CentrePiece article

School qualifications and youth custody

Youth custody has severe long-term consequences for detained young people. Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela investigate the relationship between GCSE qualifications and youth custody, and find t...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

School qualifications and youth custody

A very small number of young people enter youth custody between age 16 and 18 (about 4 in 1000 males), yet the consequences are severe. They spend an average of 7 months in youth custody and such incarceration has been r...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Lost boys? Secondary education and crime

We study the effect of secondary education on criminal behavior of young men in Finland. We exploit admission cut-offs in over-subscribed programs and estimate the effect of gaining access to a) any secondary school vs n...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender stereotypes in the family

We study whether and why parents have gender-stereotyped beliefs when they assess their child's skills. Exploiting systematic differences in parental beliefs about a child's skills and blindly graded standardized test sc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can grit be taught? Lessons from a nationwide field experiment with middle-school students

We study whether a particular socio-emotional skill - grit (the ability to sustain effort and interest towards long-term goals) - can be cultivated through a large-scale program, and how this affects student learning. Us...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Why does education reduce crime?

We provide a unifying empirical framework to study why crime reductions occurred due to a sequence of state-level dropout age reforms enacted between 1980 and 2010 in the United States. Because the reforms changed the sh...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

From immediate acceptance to deferred acceptance: effects on school admissions and achievement in England

Countries and cities around the world increasingly rely on centralized systems to assign students to schools. Two algorithms, deferred acceptance (DA) and immediate acceptance (IA), are widespread. The latter is often cr...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Human Resources: Forthcoming

STEM Graduates and Secondary School Curriculum: Does Early Exposure to Science Matter?

This paper explores the effect of strengthening the science curriculum in secondary school on STEM university education. By exploiting the staggered implementation of a reform that encouraged secondary schools in England...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance: Forthcoming

The Effects of Parental Job Loss on Children’s Outcomes

Severe economic downturns are typically characterized by a high incidence of job losses. The available evidence suggests that job losers suffer short-run earning losses that persist in the long run, are more likely to re...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

It's time to learn: School institutions and returns to instruction time

This paper investigates whether the effects of a reform that substantially increased daily instruction time in Chilean primary schools vary depending on school institutions. Focusing on incumbent students and exploiting ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

School indiscipline and crime

This paper studies the impact of compulsory schooling on violent behaviour and victimization in school using individual-level administrative data matching education and criminal records from Queensland (Australia). Explo...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Closing the Gap Between Vocational and General Education? Evidence from University Technical Colleges in England

Some countries, notably those which have long had a weak history of vocational education like the UK and the US, have recently seen a rapid expansion of hybrid schools which provide both general and vocational education....Read more...

Journal article

SERIEs:

Job loss at home: children's school performance during the Great Recession

This paper studies the intergenerational impact of parental job loss on school performance during the Great Recession in Spain. Collecting data through parental surveys in a school in the province of Barcelona, I obtain ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Parental well-being in times of Covid-19 in Germany

We examine the differential effects of Covid-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of school and day care center closures, which may be regarded ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Better together? Heterogeneous effects of tracking on student achievement

I study the effects of early between-school ability tracking on student achievement, exploiting institutional differences between German federal states. In all states, about 40% of students transition to separate academi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Disrupted schooling: impacts on achievement from the Chilean school occupations

Disrupted schooling can heavily impact the amount of education pupils receive. Starting in early June of 2011 a huge social outburst of pupil protests, walk-outs, riots and school occupations called the Chilean Winter ca...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 school shutdowns: what will they do to our children's education?

Evidence from unexpected temporary school closures and reduced instruction time suggests school closures will reduce educational achievement, both in the short and long term. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are ...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Intergenerational effects of employment protection reforms

Job insecurity has worsened in most OECD countries in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Using Labour Force Survey data, I estimate the link between parental job insecurity (as measured by the contract type held by pa...Read more...

Journal article

Management Science:

What you don't know. . .can't hurt you? A natural field experiment on relative performance feedback in higher education

This paper studies the effect of providing feedback to college students on their position in the grade distribution by using a natural field experiment. This information was updated every six months during a three-year p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Widening the high school curriculum to include soft skill training: impacts on health, behaviour, emotional wellbeing and occupational aspirations

From 2020 the health and relationships aspects of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education will be compulsory in UK schools for adolescents. However less is known about how it can be taught in an effective manner....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fiscal and education spillovers from charter school expansion

The fiscal and educational consequences of charter expansion for non-charter students are central issues in the debate over charter schools. Do charter schools drain resources and high-achieving peers from non-charter sc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why does education reduce crime?

Prior research shows reduced criminality to be a beneficial consequence of education policies that raise the school leaving age. This paper studies how crime reductions occurred in a sequence of state-level dropout age r...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Smart but unhappy: Independent-school competition and the wellbeing-efficiency trade-off in education

We study whether independent-school competition involves a trade-off between pupil wellbeing and academic performance. To test this hypothesis, we analyse data covering pupils across the OECD, exploiting historical Catho...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

It's time to learn: understanding the differences in returns to instruction time

As hours per day are inherently a limited resource, increasing daily instruction time reduces the amount of time pupils can dedicate to other activities outside school. We study how the effect of longer school days on ac...Read more...

External publication

The impact of academies on educational outcomes - the Education Policy Institute

The expansion of the academies programme has been one of the biggest changes to the English education system in a generation. 3.4 million children are now taught in either a sponsored or a converter academy. Those childr...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Adjusting Your Dreams? High School Plans and Dropout Behaviour

At the end of middle school, many low-achieving students realise that they do not have the ability to get into selective high school programmes, which may be a source of disengagement and eventually lead them to drop out...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What’s in a name? Expectations, heuristics and choice during a period of radical school reform

Education policy worldwide has sought to incentivize school improvement and facilitate pupil-school matching by introducing reforms that promote autonomy and choice. Understanding the way in which families form preferenc...Read more...

Journal article

IZA Journal of Labor and Development:

Pathways from school to work in the developing world

This paper uses novel micro data from the ILO-STWT surveys to provide evidence on the duration, endpoint, and determinants of the transition from school to work in a sample of 23 low- and middle-income countries around t...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Studying science: the impact of school curriculum on degree choice

An educational reform in England in 2004 that entitled higher ability school students to take the so-called ‘triple science’course contributed a third of the increased share of STEM graduates in England 2005-10. That is ...Read more...

Blog

ESRC blog:

The ‘photo-finish effect’: when third place winners are happier than second

Laura Kudrna, a London School of Economics scholarship PhD candidate, researches the effects of achievement on happiness, particularly focusing on examples of when greater success – be it financial, academic, romantic, o...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

School reforms and pupil performance

The relationship between school reforms, specifically those involving the introduction of new school types, and pupil performance is studied. The particular context is the introduction of academy schools in England, but ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

STEM graduates and secondary school curriculum: does early exposure to science matter?

Increasing the number of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) university graduates is considered a key element for long-term productivity and competitiveness in the global economy. Still, little is known abou...Read more...

Journal article

The Scandinavian Journal of Economics:

Valuing School Quality via a School Choice Reform

Among policymakers, educators, and economists, there remains a strong debate on the extent to which good schools matter. In this paper, we estimate school quality valuations based upon house prices, by considering a poli...Read more...

Journal article

Annals of economics and statistics:

Childhood Sporting Activities and Adult Labour-Market Outcomes.

We here ask whether childhood sport participation is positively correlated with adult labour-market outcomes. There are many potential channels for this effect, although, as usual, identifying a causal relationship is di...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Parental job loss: the impact on children's school performance

Unemployment is bad news not just for the individuals who lose their jobs but also for their families. Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela examines this underemphasised cost of economic downturns by measuring the impact of parental ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Making a difference in education

A new book by Sandra McNally and colleagues surveys the evidence on which policies and practices are working in UK schools....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job loss at home: children's school performance during the great recession in Spain

This paper studies the effect of parental job loss on children's school performance during the Great Recession in Spain, using an original panel dataset for students observed since the beginning of the crisis in a school...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Does management matter in schools?

Better school management is associated with better pupil achievement, according to CEP analysis of the quality of management practices in schools in a range of developed and developing countries. Renata Lemos notes that ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Better School Accessibility on Student outcomes

This paper identifies and quantifies the effects of better transport accessibility on student performance measured by mathematics test scores. A 27 km new subway line and the extension of an existing line in Santiago (Ch...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Childhood sporting activities and adult labour-market outcomes

We here ask whether sports participation at school is positively correlated with adult labour-market outcomes. There are many potential channels for this effect, although, as usual, identifying a causal relationship is d...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Does school spending matter?

Increases in resources for schools are typically more effective in disadvantaged schools and for disadvantaged pupils. That is one of the many findings of a review by Steve Gibbons and Sandra McNally of the research evid...Read more...

Journal article

Educational Research:

Educational attainment across the UK nations: performance, inequality and evidence

Political devolution occurred in the UK in 1998-99, following many years in which some degree of policy administration had been devolved to the four nations. Since devolution, all four countries of the UK have pursued in...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The effects of resources across school phases: a summary of recent evidence

This report provides an overview and discussion of the past decade of academic evidence on the causal effects of resources in schooling on students’ outcomes. Early evidence lacked good strategies for estimating the effe...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities

Existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. However, higher test scores could signal higher academic value-added or higher ability, more sought-after inta...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Language barriers? The impact of non-native English speakers in the classroom

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of children going to school in England who do not speak English as a first language. We investigate whether this has an impact on the educational outcomes of nativ...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Subjective Performance Evaluation in the Public Sector: Evidence from School Inspections

Performance measurement in the public sector is largely based on objective metrics, which may be subject to gaming behaviour. This paper investigates a novel subjective performance evaluation system where independent ins...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Valuing School Quality Using Boundary Discontinuities

Existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. However, higher test scores could signal better quality teaching and academic value-added, or higher ability, ...Read more...

Journal article

National Institute Economic Review:

The Evaluation of English Education Policies

Educational inequalities are evident even before children start school. Those connected to disadvantage widen out as children progress through the education system and into the labour market. We document various forms of...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

The Evaluation of English Education Policies

Educational inequalities are evident even before children start school. Those connected to disadvantage widen out as children progress through the education system and into the labour market. We document various forms of...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... House prices and school quality: evidence from state and private education in Paris

It is now widely understood that the quality of state schools in a neighbourhood has an impact on local house prices. Analysing data for Paris, Gabrielle Fack and Julien Grenet have looked deeper into this link by explor...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Houses and schools: valuation of school quality through then housing market - EALE 2010 presidential address

This paper offers a critical appraisal of the now sizable empirical literature that values school quality and performance through housing valuations. This literature consistently finds housing valuations to be significan...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

The crime reducing effect of education

In this article, we study the crime reducing potential of education, presenting causal statistical estimates based upon a law that changed the compulsory school leaving age in England and Wales. We frame the analysis in ...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Are England’s Academies More Inclusive or More ‘Exclusive’? The Impact of Institutional Change on the Pupil Profile of Schools

In 2002 the former Labour government launched the Academies Programme of school improvement. This scheme has targeted entrenched issues of pupil underachievement within state secondary schools located in deprived areas, ...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Post-16 Educational Choices and Institutional Value Added at Key Stage 5

Childcare costs are often viewed as one of the biggest barriers to work, particularly among lone parents on low incomes. Children in England are eligible to attend free part-time nursery classes (equivalent to pre-kinder...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

School Proximity and Child Labor Evidence from Rurul Tanzania

Is improved school accessibility an effective policy tool for reducing child labor in developing countries? We address this question using micro data from rural Tanzania and a regression strategy that attempts to control...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Starting School And Leaving Welfare: The Impact of Public Education on Lone Parents' Welfare Receipt

Childcare costs are often viewed as one of the biggest barriers to work, particularly among lone parents on low incomes. Children in England are eligible to attend free part-time nursery classes (equivalent to pre-kinder...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

When do Better Schools Raise Housing Prices? Evidence from Paris Public and Private Schools

In this paper, we investigate how housing prices react to the quality of education offered by neighbouring public and private schools. The organization of secondary schooling in the city of Paris, which combines residenc...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Valuing School Quality Via School Choice Reform

Among policymakers, educators and economists there remains a strong, sometimes heated, debate on the extent to which good schools matter. This is seen, for instance, in the strong trend towards establishing accountabilit...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

The Century of Education

This paper presents a historical database on educational attainment in 74 countries for the period 1870-2010, using perpetual inventory methods before 1960 and then the Cohen and Soto (2007) database. The correlation bet...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Length of Compulsory Education and Voter Turnout - Evidence from a Staged Reform

In this study, a long-term impact of additional schooling at the lower end of the educational distribution is measured on voter turnout. Schooling is instrumented with a staged Norwegian school reform, which increased mi...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

To Leave or Not to Leave? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of the Impact of Failing High School Exit Exam

The high school exit exam (HSEE) is rapidly becoming a standardized assessment procedure for educational accountability in the United States. I use a unique state-specific dataset to identify the effect of failing the HS...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Valuing School Quality Using Boundary Discontinuities

A large body of international research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. But better test scores could signal better expected academic outputs or simply reflect hi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Importance of Relative Performance Feedback Information: Evidence from a Natural Experiment using High School Students

We study the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on performance under piece-rate incentives. A natural experiment that took place in a high school offers an unusual opportunity to test this effe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

To Leave or Not to Leave? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of the Impact of Failing the High School Exit Exam

The high school exit exam (HSEE) is rapidly becoming a standardized assessment procedure for educational accountability in the United States. I use a unique state-specific dataset to identify the effect of failing the HS...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

School Quality, Child Wellbeing and Parents Satisfaction

Researchers in economics of education usually assume that parents choose schools for their high academic performance, with some support from revealed preference evidence based on local house prices. However, anecdotal ev...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Cost of Grade Retention

This paper uses administrative longitudinal micro data on the universe of Junior High school students in Uruguay to measure the effect of grade failure on students' subsequent school outcomes. Exploiting the discontinuit...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

When You Are Born Matters: The Imapct of Date of Birth on Child Cognitive Outcomes in England

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CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Is Free School Meal Status a Valid Proxy for Socio-Economic Status (in Schools Research)?

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CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Urban Density and Pupil Attainment

We explore the association between urban density and pupil attainment using three cohorts of pupils in schooling in England. Although – as widely recognised – attainment in dense urban places is low on average, this is n...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does the Underground Economy Hold Back Financial Deepening? Evidence from the Italian Credit Market

The paper investigates the relationship between underground activities and financial deepening. The access to external finance requires entrepreneurs to disclose credible information through formal documentation. This re...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

The Long Term Impacts of Compulsory Schooling: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in School Leaving Dates

This paper investigates a unique feature of the English educational system to estimate the causal effect of compulsory schooling on labour market outcomes. We examine school leaving rules that allow for discrete variatio...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Are Schools Drifting Apart? Intake Stratification in English Secondary Schools

The issue of social segregation in schools has seen a recent resurgence of interest – in the US, UK and internationally – as the debate rages on about whether policies that expand families’ freedom to choose amongst scho...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

The Mobility of English School Children

In this paper we examine links between pupil mobility and pupil and school characteristics at all levels of compulsory schooling in England. We derive measures of mobility from two academic years of the Pupil Level Annua...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Peer Effects in European Primary Schools: Evidence from PIRLS

We estimate peer effects for fourth graders in six European countries. The identification relies on variation across classes within schools. We argue that classes within primary schools are formed roughly randomly with r...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

What Should an Index of School Segregation Measure?

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CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Education Subsidies and School Drop-Out Rates

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CEP discussion paper

Apprenticeship in Europe: 'Fading' or Flourishing?

This paper sets out the extent and defining characteristics of apprenticeship in Europe. Apprenticeship is then situated within the wider context of European provision for education and training of 16-19 year olds and a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teachers Before the 'Threshold'

During the summer of 2000, the government will introduce a new system of pay and performance management for teachers. The Centre for Economic Performance is conducting a 'before-and-after' panel study of teachers and s...Read more...