The Impact of the Specialist Schools Programme on Secondary School Exam Results in England

Abstract:     
This paper estimates the impact of the specialist schools programme in England on exam performance at the end of compulsory education (at age 16). Two approaches are used. The first uses pupil level data obtained 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. The main finding is that specialist schools do perform marginally better than their non-specialist counterparts (especially in science, business studies and technology) but by much less than is indicated by some previous studies. A further finding is that the programme has had some interesting distributional effects.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 35

Keywords: specialist schools programme, exam performance, secondary schools

JEL Classification: I21,H4

working papers series