Structure and Performance of Post-Primary Schools in Northern Ireland

Vani Borooah and Colin Knox

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In this chapter we question the prevailing belief in Northern Ireland’s education circles that large schools make for better schools. There is little evidence that a large number of pupils in a school makes for a better GCSE performance. It is true that a large sixth form produces better GCSE results (in much the same way that a flourishing postgraduate program in a university department produces better undergraduate results) but (just as with a university’s post graduate programme) it is not the sixth form per se but the sixth form as an instrument for attracting good teachers that does the trick. The policy point is that there are several, possibly cheaper and more effective, ways of attracting good teachers to a school than through a large sixth form.

Keywords: School Performance; Northern Ireland; Large and Small Schools (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in The Economics of Schooling in a Divided Society Palgrave Macmillan (2015): pp. 62-80

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/78127/1/MPRA_paper_78127.pdf original version (application/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:pra:mprapa:78127

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().