How can School Quality and Performance be Improved? The Evidence on School Choice

1. How can School Quality and Performance be Improved?The Evidence on School Choice Simon Burgess

2. Introduction • Set out the issues and the economics evidence on school choice and performance: • Assignment • Issues and claims • Evidence • Focus on England, brief refs elsewhere • Note – “school choice” means different things in different countries. www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

3. Performance OK ?? • Number of concerns expressed: • “Standards”: the typical level of educational achievement • “Basics”: the skills achieved at the lower end of the attainment distribution • Equity: how school influences attainment gaps – by socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity • Efficiency: productivity in schools – the resources used to achieve these outcomes. www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

4. Educational achievement 1988-2008 Source: DCSF, 2007 www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

5. International Comparison Source: ‘PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World’ (OECD 2007) www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

6. Equity Source: DCSF, 2007 www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

7. Productivity Source: UKCeMGA, ONS www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

8. Assignment Problem • Every year: • Half a million pupils allocated to seats in primary schools, and half a million pupils allocated to seats in secondary schools • What’s the best system to do this? • Each system has incentives built into it, implicit or explicit. Incentives for schools, and for families. • We need to understand their impact on the actions of the players, and to adjust the system. www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

9. Alternatives • Neighbourhood schooling • Elite schooling (grammar schools) • Choice-based schooling • Related (supply-side) policies and issues: • Tie-breakers such as lotteries/ballots • Building new schools, Academies • Private schools • Neighbourhood formation www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

10. Choice-based schooling • School choice has been argued to: • Raise standards (qualifications) • Improve equity • Compare choice to alternative assignment mechanisms, not just by itself. • I will go through: • Evidence on the process • Evidence on the outcomes www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

11. Process of school choice • Choosers must: • be able to access more than one school • care strongly about quality • have good information about quality • generally get their preferred schools • Schools must: • gain by receiving many applications • be able to adjust to demand www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

12. Feasibility of access Percentage of pupils with three secondary schools within 2, 5, 8 km www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

13. Feasibility 2 How many pupils have a good secondary school within their nearest 3? A good school is defined as being in the top third nationally of %5A-C. www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

14. Feasibility 3 How many pupils attend their nearest school? One of the nearest 3? www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

15. School Distance Contours in Birmingham Source: CMPO www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

16. London primary schools, 2005/6 The Core catchment area for each school is defined as an admission space containing 50% of the pupils attending the school Rich Harris, CMPO. www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

17. Preferences • On-going work … • We use information on primary school preferences from the Millennium Cohort Study. • Longitudinal dataset – currently 3 waves • Sample • Born 1st September 2000 – 31st August 2001 • Random sample of electoral wards • We look at England only • Wave 3 – children are aged 5, primary school age • Final sample is 9,468 children • School characteristics merged from PLASC/NPD • School relative locations derived using GIS www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

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20. Admissions and Strategies • Schools and LEAs have admissions rules • Given those rules and their underlying preferences, families form strategies for the school preference forms (and wider: move house; tutoring; extra-curricula activities; prayer). • Game theoretic analysis of these choices. • Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, Roth, and Sonmez – Boston and New York mechanisms • Very complex strategies potentially in England, given variety of admissions criteria. • West and co-authors have documented these rules. www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

21. Overall, in primary schools, over 80% of those stating preferences get a place in their first preference school. • But – how did they decide their preferences? Are they “true preferences” or resigned/realistic decisions? Doesn’t necessarily mean everyone is happy. • Some suggestive evidence on quality and proximity: www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

22. Evidence on Outcomes • Test scores • Sorting • Access • Neighbourhood sorting • This is evidence from England www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

23. Test scores • Overview: • Only a few papers in England that can reasonably be said to identify a causal effect. • Little effect on pupil progress; some weak and inconsistent positive effects here and there. • Allen and Vignoles (2009) • Burgess and Slater (2006) • Clark (2007) • Gibbons, Machin, and Silva (2008) • We use a boundary change to generate an exogenous change in degree of school choice. www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

24. Schools in Berkshire with change in competition after the LEA boundary changes www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

25. Boundary Changes • Many LEA boundaries changed, mainly between 1996 and 1999. There is a strong presumption that pupils will attend a school within the LEA in which they live. • We find: no strong, significant effect of the decline in competition on pupil progress. • In all specifications, the point estimate is negative, but far from significant. • Significantly negative effect for Foundation or Voluntary Aided schools (schools with more control over their own admissions). • In another area, we do find a significant effect: CUBA (Counties that Used to Be Avon) www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

26. Boundary change in Avon www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

27. Sorting • Greater feasibility of school choice associated with greater sorting of pupils into schools. • This matters because of potential peer effects in education, and wider social concerns. • Burgess et al (2007): ratio of school segregation to neighbourhood segregation is higher in areas with more feasible choice. • Others: Allen (2008) • This may or may not be a causal link. www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

28. Sorting and choice Sorting: Ratio of school-based to neighbourhood-based segregation on the basis of the indicated variable. Choice: Mean number of “nearby schools” each school in the LEA has, where nearby means within 10 minutes drive. Burgess et al (2007) www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

29. Neighbourhood Sorting • School assignment rules affect nature of communities around schools. • Neighbourhood schooling leads to strong sorting by income into neighbourhoods. • More choice-based (and no proximity rule for tie-breaks) may not. • Selection does not: www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

30. Segregation on test scores. Neighbourhood sorting on the horizontal axis and school sorting on the vertical axis. By LEA Source: Burgess et al (2007) www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

31. Access • What is the chance of pupils from poor families attending high scoring schools? • This matters for social mobility. • Questions: • What is the extent (if any) of a differential chance of going to a good school? • How does it happen? Comparing role of location (= proximity) and other factors • What would be the impact of increasing choice? www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

32. Access 2 • Poor children are about half as likely to go to high-scoring schools. • Much of that gap, but not all, comes through location. That is, accounting fully for location, the gap is much smaller, but not zero. • This within-location gap doesn’t vary much by degree of choice. • More support for school choice might help reduce the main barrier to attending a high-scoring school: location. www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

33. Access 3 Probability of pupils attending their nearest school www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

34. Conclusions • Any assignment system has incentives built into it, implicit or explicit. • Evidence for England suggests choice & competition: • does not systematically raise scores • is associated with higher sorting. • Pure neighbourhood schooling would probably yield even higher sorting of schools and communities. • Supporting choice by poor families would help reduce the socio-economic gap in quality of school attended. • More support for choice won’t work well without accompanying supply side reforms: • Fair tie-breaks, not proximity – lotteries/ballots. • Easier school expansion or take-overs • Building new schools - Academies • Choice, accountability and incentives for schools: • Consider more resources for schools admitting pupils with low scores. • Penalise schools per pupil they fail (e.g. those who do not reach a G grade). www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo

35. School choice – Relevant CMPO Papers www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo