Away from home, better at school. The case of a British boarding school
Away from home, better at school. The case of a British boarding school
In this paper we study whether substituting family inputs with school resources in an academically oriented environment has an impact on achievement in high-stakes national examinations. We use administrative data for England to estimate the effect of attending a selective boarding school that admits an unusually high share of pupils with low socio-economic status on attainment at the end of compulsory education. By using propensity score matching we obtain comparable control groups in selective non-boarding schools. Our main finding is that the probability of being in the top decile of achievement in the exams increases by about 18 percentage points compared to 59% for controls.
Foliano, F.
323e8871-4b9f-4a78-b22f-39f4e46eca39
Green, Francis
7e67da4b-5ee8-4dd9-b62a-e1ae47fdf855
Sartarelli, M.
72534ed7-520a-4491-ab78-bd29429fc05c
1 December 2019
Foliano, F.
323e8871-4b9f-4a78-b22f-39f4e46eca39
Green, Francis
7e67da4b-5ee8-4dd9-b62a-e1ae47fdf855
Sartarelli, M.
72534ed7-520a-4491-ab78-bd29429fc05c
Foliano, F., Green, Francis and Sartarelli, M.
(2019)
Away from home, better at school. The case of a British boarding school.
Economics of Education Review, 73, [101911].
(doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2019.101911).
Abstract
In this paper we study whether substituting family inputs with school resources in an academically oriented environment has an impact on achievement in high-stakes national examinations. We use administrative data for England to estimate the effect of attending a selective boarding school that admits an unusually high share of pupils with low socio-economic status on attainment at the end of compulsory education. By using propensity score matching we obtain comparable control groups in selective non-boarding schools. Our main finding is that the probability of being in the top decile of achievement in the exams increases by about 18 percentage points compared to 59% for controls.
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Published date: 1 December 2019
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Local EPrints ID: 509898
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/509898
ISSN: 0272-7757
PURE UUID: 5325bc1f-fb7d-4133-83ba-6c3556b9c017
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Date deposited: 10 Mar 2026 17:51
Last modified: 11 Mar 2026 03:14
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Author:
F. Foliano
Author:
Francis Green
Author:
M. Sartarelli
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