Does additional spending help urban schools? An evaluation using boundary discontinuities

Stephen Gibbons, Sandra McNally and Martina Viarengo

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This study exploits spatial anomalies in school funding policy in England to provide new evidence on the impact of resources on student achievement in urban areas. Anomalies arise because the funding allocated to Local Education Authorities (LEA) depends, through a funding formula, on the ‘additional educational needs’ of its population and prices in the district. However, the money each school receives from its LEA is not necessarily related to the school’s own specific local conditions and constraints. This implies that neighbouring schools with similar intakes, operating in the same labour market, facing similar prices, but in different LEAs, can receive very different incomes. We find that these funding disparities give rise to sizeable differences in pupil attainment in national tests at the end of primary school, showing that school resources have an important role to play in improving educational attainment, especially for lower socio-economic groups. The design is geographical boundary discontinuity design which compares neighbouring schools, matched on a proxy for additional educational needs of its students (free school meal entitlement – FSM), in adjacent districts. The key identification requirement is one of conditional ignorability of the level of LEA grant, where conditioning is on geographical location of schools and their proportion of FSM children.

Keywords: urban schools; education; resources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published in Journal of the European Economic Association, 1, October, 2018, 16(5), pp. 1618 - 1668. ISSN: 1542-4766

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/84213/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Additional Spending Help Urban Schools? An Evaluation Using Boundary Discontinuities (2018)
Working Paper: Does Additional Spending Help Urban Schools? An Evaluation Using Boundary Discontinuities (2012)
Working Paper: Does Additional Spending Help Urban Schools? An Evaluation Using Boundary Discontinuities (2011)
Working Paper: Does Additional Spending Help Urban Schools? An Evaluation Using Boundary Discontinuities (2011)
Working Paper: Does additional spending help urban schools? An evaluation using boundary discontinuities (2011)
Working Paper: Does additional spending help urban schools? An evaluation using boundary discontinuities (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:84213

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