Does greater primary school autonomy improve pupil attainment? Evidence from primary school converter academies in England✰

Joseph Regan-Stansfield

Economics of Education Review, 2018, vol. 63, issue C, 167-179

Abstract: A recent English education policy has been to encourage state primary schools to become academies: state-funded, non-selective, and highly autonomous establishments. Primary schools have been able to opt-in to academy status since 2010 and academies now account for twenty-one percent of the primary sector. This paper investigates the causal effect of becoming a converter academy on primary school assessment outcomes, and on entry-year intake composition. Unlike existing evidence focused on earlier academies formed from failing secondary schools, no evidence is found of a converter academy effect on attainment for the average pupil. Although, there is evidence of a slight positive effect on age 11 attainment for pupils eligible for free school meals. There is no evidence that becoming a converter academy affects the composition of the entry-year intake.

Keywords: School type; School autonomy; Primary education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775716306562
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:63:y:2018:i:c:p:167-179

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.02.004

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn

More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().