School Autonomy and Pupils’ Performance: Academy Conversion in English Primary Schools
48 Pages Posted: 25 Sep 2024
Abstract
From 2010, primary schools in England could apply to convert to “academy” status, thereby increasing their managerial autonomy. More than one third of them have done so up to now. This paper examines the effect of this change in the schools’ governance regime on their pupils’ education attainment. We use a panel switching regression model where the conversion decision is instrumented with the attitude towards conversion of the stakeholders in the school’s administrative authority to account for the potential endogeneity of the conversion to academy status. We also perform an event study to understand the dynamic impact of the conversion. We find that conversionhad at most limited effects on the pupils’ attainment in the short term, and in addition that this improved attainment is weaker or absent in schools with fewer advantaged pupils, and it fades away as time passes.
Keywords: Academy, Primary school, Educational attainment, School autonomy.
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