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Away from home, better at school. The case of a British boarding school

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  • Foliano, Francesca
  • Green, Francis
  • Sartarelli, Marcello

Abstract

In this paper we study whether substituting family inputs with school resources in an academically oriented environment has an impact on achievement in high-stakes national examinations. We use administrative data for England to estimate the effect of attending a selective boarding school that admits an unusually high share of pupils with low socio-economic status on attainment at the end of compulsory education. By using propensity score matching we obtain comparable control groups in selective non-boarding schools. Our main finding is that the probability of being in the top decile of achievement in the exams increases by about 18 percentage points compared to 59% for controls.

Suggested Citation

  • Foliano, Francesca & Green, Francis & Sartarelli, Marcello, 2019. "Away from home, better at school. The case of a British boarding school," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:73:y:2019:i:c:s027277571830150x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2019.101911
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ability; Achievement gap; Boarding; Education; Grammar school; GCSE; Private school; Socio-economic status; SES;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

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