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Resources and Standards in Urban Schools

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Author Info

  • Stephen Machin
  • Sandra McNally
  • Costas Meghir

Abstract

Despite being central to government education policy in many countries, there remains considerable debate about whether resources matter for pupil outcomes. In this paper we look at this question by considering an English education policy initiative - Excellence in Cities - which has been a flagship policy aimed at raising standards in inner-city secondary schools. We report results showing a positive impact of the extra resources on school attendance and performance in Mathematics (though not for English) but, interestingly, there is a marked heterogeneity in the effectiveness of the policy. Its greatest impact has been in more disadvantaged schools and on the performance of middle and high ability students within these schools. A simple cost-benefit calculation suggests the policy to be cost-effective. We conclude that additional resources can matter for children in the poorest secondary schools, particularly when building on a solid educational or ability background. However, small changes in resources have little or no effect on the 'hard to reach' children who have not achieved a sufficiently strong prior level.

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File URL: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/ceedps/ceedp76.pdf
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE in its series CEE Discussion Papers with number 0076.

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Date of creation: Feb 2007
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Handle: RePEc:cep:ceedps:0076

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Web page: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/publications.htm

Related research

Keywords: Education; Resources; Evaluation; Disadvantage;

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References

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  1. Carneiro, Pedro & Heckman, James J., 2003. "Human Capital Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 821, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Alan Krueger, 1997. "Experimental Estimates of Education Production Functions," Working Papers 758, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
  3. Victor Lavy & Analia Schlosser, 2004. "Targeted Remedial Education for Under-Performing Teenagers: Costs and Benefits," NBER Working Papers 10575, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Blundell, Richard William & Costa Dias, Monica & Meghir, Costas & Van Reenen, John, 2003. "Evaluating the Employment Impact of a Mandatory Job Search Programme," CEPR Discussion Papers 3786, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
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Cited by:
  1. Stephen Gibbons & Sandra McNally & Martina Viarengo, 2011. "Does Additional Spending Help Urban Schools? An Evaluation Using Boundary Discontinuities," CEE Discussion Papers 0128, Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE.
  2. Rodríguez-Planas, Núria, 2010. "Longer-Term Impacts of Mentoring, Educational Services, and Incentives to Learn: Evidence from a Randomized Trial," IZA Discussion Papers 4754, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  3. J Taylor & Steve Bradley & G Migali, 2009. "The distributional impact of increased school resources: the Specialist Schools Initiative and the Excellence in Cities Programme," Working Papers 602528, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
  4. Monique De Haan, 2012. "The Effect of Additional Funds for Low-Ability Pupils - A Nonparametric Bounds Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 3993, CESifo Group Munich.

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