The issue of social segregation in schools has seen a recent resurgence of interest--in the US, UK and internationally--as the debate rages on about whether policies that expand families' freedom to choose amongst schools encourage divergence or convergence in the types of pupil different schools admit. Most attention has been focussed on…

It is a common belief that children will thrive if educated amongst better class and schoolmates. It is a belief that guides many parents in their choice of school, and has important implications for policy on school choice and organisation. Many studies have tried to measure this "peer-group" effect, but the enterprise is plagued by conceptual…

Throughout the post-war period there have been many attempts to reform the UK education system, often with an explicit intention to try and make it more productive. The list of education policy reforms that have been attempted over the last 50 years is quite extensive, and recently the UK (and in particular England and Wales) has introduced many…

In the UK, there is a marked gender gap in the educational attainment of boys and girls. At the end of compulsory education, 10 per cent fewer boys achieve 5 or more good GCSEs. This gap is by no means confined to GCSE. It is evident at all Key Stages. Furthermore, some indicators suggest that the gap has widened over time. In this paper, we…

In recent years the role of investment in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as an effective tool to raise educational standards has attracted growing attention from both policy makers and academic researchers. While the former tend to express enthusiastic claims about the use of new technologies in schools, the latter have raised…

The expansion of school choice and greater competition between schools is currently the centrepiece of government educational policy in the UK. There is an increasing emphasis on parents' right to choose their preferred schools, and whilst many parents may value choice itself, the advocates of these market oriented reforms usually argue that the…

We estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings using the changes in compulsory schooling laws for secondary schools in West German states during the period from 1948 to 1970. The German school system streams students into three separate types of secondary schools and the change in compulsory schooling laws affected students in the…

The paper aims to make a methodological contribution to the education segregation literature, providing a critique of previous measures of segregation used in the literature, as well as suggesting an alternative approach to measuring school segregation. It also provides new empirical evidence on changes in the extent of socio-economic segregation…

The Parents Returning to Work Program (PRTW) is a Victorian government initiative which commenced in 2003. It provides grants to assist eligible parents who wish to return to paid employment after a period of caring for children to participate in training that will increase their work skills and job prospects. This evaluation aimed to review the…

A skilled and flexible workforce is increasingly identified by governments as key to economic development. With the emergence of a global market in both educational services and labour, agreements on mutual recognition and transparency of skills and qualifications have become important elements of international co-operation. They are often…

If the best universities in the world--who have the widest choice of candidates--systematically appoint top researchers as their vice chancellors and presidents, is this one form of evidence that, on average, better researchers make better leaders? This paper addresses the first part of the question: are they currently appointing distinguished…

The student revolt of May 1968 led to chaos across France, temporarily shaking the economic and political establishment. The crisis was unanticipated, unpredictable and short-lived. The famous events coincided with the period in which examinations are undertaken. In the university context, exams became a central aspect of the bargaining process…

There is an extensive theoretical literature that postulates a trade off between child quantity and quality within a family. However, there is little causal evidence that speaks to this theory. Using a rich dataset on the entire population of Norway over an extended period of time, we examine the effects of family size and birth order on the…

This paper examines the impact of a program that subsidizes children to remain in school for up to two years beyond the statutory age. The programme was first piloted in a number of areas in England from September 1999. Evaluating such interventions is of course critical to the shaping of education policy and the effectiveness or otherwise of a…

There has been a substantial rise in British education levels in recent decades, and new empirical evidence suggests that less able but wealthier children have benefited most from this expansion, at least during the 1970s and 1980s. There are many potential explanations for this trend. For example, during this period, the UK's highly selective…