Mental health problems--and depression in particular--have been rising internationally. The link between poor mental health and poor educational outcomes is particularly interesting in the case of the UK which has a low international ranking both on measures of child wellbeing and the probability of early drop-out from the labour market and…

We consider the effects of daytime fasting by pregnant women during the lunar month of Ramadan on their children's test scores at age seven. Using English register data, we find that scores are 0.05 to 0.08 standard deviations lower for Pakistani and Bangladeshi students exposed to Ramadan in early pregnancy. These estimates are downward biased to…

The need for education to help every child rather than focus on average attainment has become a more central part of the policy agenda in the US and the UK. Remedial programmes are often difficult to evaluate because participation is usually based on pupil characteristics that are largely unobservable to the analyst. In this paper we evaluate…

There are large disparities between the achievements, behaviour and aspirations of children growing up in different neighbourhoods. This has contributed to the view that neighbourhoods can determine individuals' outcomes. Notably, in the long run these effects could lead to larger social inequality and reduce social mobility, which is why they…

The Centre for the Economics of Education was asked to investigate the factors that influence a range of children's academic and non-academic outcomes, including their enjoyment of school, whether they take unauthorised absence from school and whether they feel they are bullied. The study also investigated whether schools can influence these…

The Centre for the Economics of Education was asked to bring together a wide range of academic evidence (primarily England-based) to investigate the extent to which academic and non-academic childhood outcomes are complementary to each other, or are in some way traded-off against each other. The report also investigates the drivers of both…

Global economic transformations have never been as dramatic as in the twentieth century. Most countries have experienced radical changes in the standards of income per capita, technology, fertility, mortality, income inequality and the extent of democracy in the course of the past century. It is the goal of many disciplines--economics, history,…

In this paper, the author looks at whether teachers give better subjective assessments to students of their own race and/or gender, conditionally on test scores. Subjective assessments are pervasive in schools; most teachers fill school records that include comments on the child's ability or behavior. And important decisions such as tracking,…

When describing the determinants of economic or social outcomes, economists often have a very simplified view of skill. Failure to take into account the fact that skill is intrinsically a multidimensional object may misguide both research and the design of social policy. In this paper, the authors analyse the consequences and determinants of…

The impact of date of birth on cognitive test scores is well documented across many countries, with the youngest children in each academic year performing more poorly, on average, than the older members of their cohort (see, for example, Bedard and Dhuey (2006) or Puhani and Weber (2005)1). However, relatively little is known about the driving…

In this paper we examine links between pupil mobility and pupil and school characteristics at all levels of compulsory schooling in England. We derive measures of mobility from two academic years of the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) data, a unique national administrative pupil level longitudinal data source. Our findings suggest that…

The VET sector provides several major pathways for young people from education to work and one of them is the apprenticeship. Apprenticeships combine participation in work and formal learning in an extended education and training structure that contributes to skill formation for individuals and the wider skills base. This paper uses Longitudinal…