Title: Can school competition improve standards? The case of faith schools in England
1Can school competition improve standards? The
case of faith schools in England
- Rebecca Allen and Anna Vignoles
- Institute of Education, University of London
- Presentation to PLASC/NPD User Group
- 18th November 2008
2Motivation for paper
- Faith schools, choice, competition improve
standards or sorting? - Endogenity problem
- Inconclusive UK competition literature
- Claims of the effectiveness of faith school
competition in US and Canada
3Outline of talk
- Institutional background
- Choice and competition between the faith and
non-faith sectors - Estimation strategy and data
- Results competition and pupil achievement
- Faith schools and pupil sorting
4Institutional background
- Growth in faith schools I churches were the main
providers of 19th century education - Growth in faith schools II 1902 Education Act
set up the Dual System of state schooling, with
mass building of schools by churches in 15 years
following the Act to prevent state displacing
church - Growth in faith schools III expansion in RC
schools in 1950s/60s, taking advantage of
government loan scheme - Today, religious schools in the state-maintained
system educate about 15 per cent of secondary
aged children (two-thirds are Roman Catholic,
most of rest are CofE) - Almost all are Voluntary-Aided (VA) rather than
Voluntary-Controlled (VC)
5Who can feasibly choose a faith school?
- Typical admissions policy at a faith school
prioritises - own denomination
- related denominations
- other religions
- non-religious families based on proximity
- Clear identification of Catholic, Anglican and
non-religious families is not possible - Religiosity requirements vary by school
- Religious self-identification of the family may
not be strong - The proportion of families who can feasibly
choose a faith school is not directly related to
the size of the underlying religious population - Families can adjust church-going behaviour to
satisfy requirements - Demonstration of religious adherence may not be
onerous or necessary - Nature of competition related to size of
religious population
6Is active choice happening?
- If 25 per cent of pupils in an area are at VA
faith schools, this is associated with a 20
percentage point increase in the proportion of
pupils not at their nearest school - Transitions between primary and secondary school
7School responses to active choice
- Schools are incentivised to respond to faith
school competition for pupils by improving
perceived school quality where - Parents who are considering the religious sector
have children who are seen as desirable to teach. - Parents who are considering the religious sector
would be responsive to a change in the schools
perceived quality because they value academic
results highly, relative to other characteristics
such as religious ethos. - Competing schools are closely matched in terms of
pupil achievement in exams and therefore league
table position.
8Strategies to improve perceived quality
- Effort focused on raising pupil achievement at
GCSE - Effort focused on altering the social and ability
characteristics of the pupil intake
(cream-skimming)
9Area-wide effect of religious schools on
achievement
- Education production function
- Effects of religious schools
- Direct effect of differences in religious vs
non-religious school effectiveness - Competition effects
- Changes in relative sizes of differentially
effective schools - Changes in peer composition that impact on
achievement
10Secular school quality
Proportion of Catholic school places in the area
Pupil achievement at GCSE
Historical Catholic population
Catholic families
11HOXBY (1994) - EFFECT OF US (PRIVATE) CATHOLIC
SCHOOLS ON AREA-WIDE ACHIEVEMENT
- Finds 10 percentage point increase in Catholic
school enrollment produces 0.9 additional years
worth of educational achievement and 6 higher
wages - Supply of Catholic schools is instrumented using
the current size of the Catholic population in
the area - Has pupil-level control variable of religion from
National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - Identifying assumption Catholic families who
live in predominantly Catholic areas are no
different from Catholic families who live in
areas with few other Catholic families
12Card et al. (2008) Effect of Canadian
state-funded Catholic schools on area achievement
- Find small positive effects from competition in
the area of Ontario between grades 3 and 6 - Use school fixed effects specification of test
score growth (with repeated cross-sectional
pupil-level data for 5 cohorts) - Identification strategy comparisons between
areas with different fractions of Catholic
families and different rates of growth of housing
stock
13Secular school quality
Proportion of Catholic school places in the area
Pupil achievement at GCSE
Historical Catholic population
Catholic families
14Pupil-level achievement models
- Estimated using large ancient counties (39), so
little sorting across areas based on unobserved
characteristics - Wide range of area-wide controls, including
religious composition of area from Census and
Church surveys
15Instrumenting catholic school supply
- Taking specification 1, but treating RCsch as
endogenous to modern-day demand for Catholic
schooling - First stage uses Catholic populations in ancient
counties in 1931, which predicts RCsch (F-value
20.81) - Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) identifies
the effects of variation in supply of Catholic
schools resulting from historical differences in
the size of the Catholic population, holding
constant modern-day Catholic church-going in the
county.
16Data
- National pupil database school leavers (age 16)
in 2005, matched to KS4, KS3, KS2 - Outcome variables
- GCSE capped to best 8 subjects
- English, maths and science GCSE (best score in
each subject) - Pupil control variables
- NPD indicators (FSM, EAL, SEN etc)
- KS2 marks data separately for English, maths and
science - Deprivation indicators (IMD and 57 ACORN dummies)
- Ancient county control variables
- Pupil-level characteristics aggregated up to
county - English Church Census 2005
- Religious proportions from 2001 Census of
Population
17Results competition from faith schools
18(No Transcript)
19Results competition from catholic schools
20(No Transcript)
21Faith schools in the local competition space
- Each school has a unique competition space
nearest 9 secondary schools by distance (single
sex school adjustment) - For each school, where does it sit in the local
schooling hierarchy in terms of FSM and top
ability intake composition? - For each school, how stratified is the local
schooling hierarchy and is this related to the
number of faith schools in the competition space?
2210 school competition space by FSM composition of
pupil intake
2310 school competition space by top ability
composition of pupil intake
24Relationship between number of faith schools in
local schooling hierarchy and intake
stratification
25Association between faith schools in ancient
county and intake stratification
D (FSM) D (Top ability)
faith schools 0.25 0.26
Catholic schools 0.31 0.52
26Association between faith schools in ancient
county and increase in dispersion of test scores
from KS2 to KS4
27Conclusions
- No evidence that faith schools improve (or
damage) area-wide academic achievement by
encouraging competition for pupils - Faith schools are associated with more stratified
local schooling markets - Evidence of cream-skimming or parental choice
strategies? - Stratification lowers incentives to compete based
on effort - Apparent effectiveness of faith schools in
regressions likely due to within-area sorting
based on unobservables