Prof Gill Wyness discussed the role of school type in academic match, comparing mismatch across independent schools, state schools and FE colleges. She reviewed the implications on mismatch in higher education for students from both state and private schools.
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6/12/2023
Can Mentoring Alleviate Family Disadvantage in Adolescence? A Field Experiment to Improve Labor-Market Prospects
We study a mentoring program that aims to improve the labor-market prospects of school-attending adolescents from disadvantaged families by offering them a university-student mentor. Our RCT investigates program effectiveness on three outcome dimensions that are highly predictive of later labor-market success: math grades, patience/social skills, and labor-market orientation.
17
5/9/2023
How does testing young children influence educational attainment and well-being?
The extent to which young children are tested in school varies markedly internationally. Yet, there is little evidence on the effects of this testing on student outcomes, both in terms of educational performance and wellbeing. A major concern in low testing environments is that testing children is detrimental to their mental health with no countervailing improvements in educational attainment. We return to this issue using random variation in math exam taking amongst Norwegian children in early primary school. We demonstrate no effect on average performance, no effects on student welfare, but evidence that testing improves some aspects of teaching practices, feedback and engagement.
4
5/9/2023
Educational achievement at age 16, the end of statutory full-time education in England, is key to young people’s future educational, economic, social and health outcomes. I look at achievement gaps by the three central dimensions of equality: race, sex and class, and use the Second Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE2) which is the most up-to-date nationally representative dataset with comprehensive measures of all three dimensions.
50
4/17/2023
This paper studies how a national minimum wage affects wages, and in particular, racial earnings disparities in a middle-income country with a large informal sector. Our context is the Brazilian economy, characterized by persistently large racial disparities and the availability of detailed labor force surveys and administrative matched employer-employee data with information on race. We analyze the effect of large increases in the minimum wage that occurred between 1999 and 2009.
10
4/17/2023
Within the ‘normal’ school year-group cohort, summer-born children are proportionally much younger than autumn-borns at the usual point of school entry. Since 2014, families’ right to request later entry, particularly for summer-borns, has been enshrined in national guidance.
Deferred entry may benefit certain children – potentially including some who were born premature and some who have ‘special educational needs’ and/or disabilities (SEND). However, the ‘right to request’ might also exacerbate inequalities, if more ‘advantaged’ families tend to access it.
Existing evidence on patterns of entry is not nationally representative, probably contains biased responses, and does not consider the interaction between child-level factors and family circumstances. Among children who may plausibly be better served by education with the cohort below, are those who are from ‘advantaged’ families more likely to follow this pathway?
18
2/21/2023
Traditionalists argue that teachers should carefully sequence the best knowledge from their subject area and deliver it directly to the whole class. Progressives argue that teachers should instead facilitate pupils’ exploration of their individual interests, thereby nurturing curiosity and thinking skills. We test these claims using fixed effect models applied to data on 1,223 pupils (age 11-14) in the German National Educational Panel Study. We find few links between pupil outcomes and their teachers’ orientation. The one exception is that - contrary to progressive claims - pupils develop greater interest in learning when taught by teachers with a traditionalist orientation.
33
12/16/2022
Andrea will assess how the enlargement of university access enacted in the UK following the 1963 Robbins Report provides an ideal case study to draw lessons for the future. He will explain that this expansion is associated with a decline of the average intelligence of graduates and of the college wage premium across cohorts, and that it mainly benefited relatively less intelligent students from advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.
Structural estimates and counterfactual simulations suggest that the implemented policy was unfit to reach high-ability individuals as Robbins had instead advocated, and that a meritocratic selection of university students would have attained that goal and would have also been more egalitarian.
This seminar is jointly hosted with CReAM: Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration.
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12/16/2022