Project 2: Stratification and School Performance

Contacts:

	Dr Steve Gibbons, LSE, CEP and CEE associate Tel: +44(0)20 7955 7773 Email: s.gibbons@lse.ac.uk
	Dr Anna Vignoles, Institute of Education. Tel:+44(0)20 7612 6879 Email: a.vignoles@ioe.ac.uk

Expansion of school choice is a central theme in current debates on educational policy. Proponents of choice argue that freedom of choice benefits pupils through 'matching', and 'quasi-market' forces. Critics point to the adverse consequences of a more 'segregated' school system. Research within this programme investigates issues related to schooling and the school policy environment that contribute to this debate.

We learn that improvements in school standards provide only weak justification for policy to expand school choice and competition in England. Any benefits are at best small. On the other hand, concerns about segregation and the consequences of peer-group influence do not provide much of a case against these policies either. In fact schools and peer groups in general contribute little to the variation in achievement between pupils, when compared to the influence of family background.

The case for and against choice and competition must to be decided on other grounds, and judged against other interventions such as increased school resources and policy that targets the personal background causes of educational disadvantage.

Ongoing research is looking at the way parental choice over schooling is revealed in the housing market, through the price paid for living close to high performing and well-resourced schools, and on the consequences of this process for school and residential segregation.

Strand 1 describes the patterns of 'segregation' in England's schools and has shown big differences between schools in terms of the characteristics of their intake. However, policy reforms over the 1990s and the turn of the century that facilitated parental choice do not appear to have caused a rise in 'segregation' in England's schools, either by income or ability.

What Should an Index of School Segregation Measure?
Rebecca Allen, Anna Vignoles, March 2006
Paper No' CEEDP0060: | Full paper (free)

This paper has been published in Oxford Review of Education, 33 (4), 2007

Are Schools Drifting Apart? Intake Stratification in English Secondary Schools
Steve Gibbons, Shqiponja Telhaj, December 2006
Paper No' CEEDP0064: Read Abstract | Full paper (free)

This paper has been published in Urban Studies 44 (7), pp.1281-1305, 2007

Strand 2 looks at the relative contribution of school, background and peer effects on pupil achievement. If a child benefits from education amongst better peers then we should worry about segregation, because concentrating disadvantaged children together disadvantages these children even more. The findings from England and Europe indicate that a child's schoolmates make only a very small contribution to his or her achievement, if they matter at all. Most educational inequalities are due to pre-school factors and school quality in general matters much less.

What Makes a Test Score ? The Respective Contributions of Pupils, Schools and Peers in Achievement in English Primary Education
Francis Kramarz, Steve Machin and Amine Ouazad, December 2007
Working Paper: Full paper (free)

Mobility and School Disruption
Steve Gibbons, Shqiponja Telhaj, August 2007
Paper No' CEEDP0083: Read Abstract | Full paper (free)

Peer Effects and Pupil Attainment: Evidence from Secondary School Transition
Steve Gibbons, Shqiponja Telhaj, May 2006
Paper No' CEEDP0063: Read Abstract | Full paper (free)

Peer Effects in European Primary Schools: Evidence from PIRLS
Andreas Ammermueller, Jörn-Steffen Pischke, May 2006
Paper No' CEEDP0065: Read Abstract | Full paper (free)

Strand 3 looks directly at the issue of whether greater parental choice and inter-school competition raises standards. The evidence for London primary schools indicates that choice does not improve pupil performance. However, schools with more autonomous governance and admissions arrangements show a small positive response to competition. For England as a whole, secondary schools located in dense urban environments perform marginally better in 'value-added' terms than schools that are in more isolated places.

Competition, Choice and Pupil Achievement
Steve Gibbons, Steve Gibbons, Stephen Machin, Olmo Silva, January 2006
Paper No' CEEDP0056: | Full paper (free)

This paper will be published in Journal of the European Economics Association (forthcoming 2008).

Urban Density and Pupil Attainment
Steve Gibbons, Olmo Silva, May 2007
Paper No' CEEDP0080: Read Abstract | Full paper (free)

This paper has been published in Journal of Urban Economics 63 (2), pp. 631-650, 2008.