Measuring Pupil Attainment in English Secondary Schools: A Preliminary Analysis

Adele Atkinson and Deborah Wilson

The Centre for Market and Public Organisation from The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine patterns of attainment of boys and girls at different stages of their secondary education and to investigate factors that may affect pupil outcomes. We employ a national dataset of matched examination results, recently released by the Department for Education and Skills, which includes the results of the cohort of pupils who sat Key Stage 3 exams at age 14 in 1997 and GCSE (or equivalent) exams at age 16 in 1999. We find a consistent picture of boys underachieving relative to their female peers. This gender gap widens between the ages of 14 and 16. Grammar schools outperform comprehensives and secondary moderns for both boys and girls at both Key Stage 3 and GCSE. This is no longer the case when we consider a measure of the ‘value added’ by different school types between these two stages. For example, we find that comprehensives add more value on average than grammar schools for female pupils. The relative importance of gender and school type (here proxied by admissions policy) on pupil outcomes depends on which measure of pupil attainment we consider.

Keywords: education; pupil attainment; gender gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H4 I21 L3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2003-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mfd and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp63.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp63.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp63.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.bristol.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp63.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2003/wp63.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2003/wp63.pdf)

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:bri:cmpowp:03/063

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in The Centre for Market and Public Organisation from The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().