Do free schools increase opportunities and reduce disparities in economic and social outcomes?
Lead Research Organisation:
Manchester Metropolitan University
Department Name: Sociology
Abstract
Educational performance varies widely across England, with lower education outcomes associated with adverse economic, health and social outcomes. Reducing educational inequality therefore is central to increasing opportunities and reducing disparities for people and places across the UK. Since 2010 the UK Government has facilitated the opening of 'free schools' in England. Such institutions are new schools that operate outside of the control of local government and enjoy freedoms around curriculum, staffing and financial management. As free schools are perceived to outperform local authority maintained schools, they have been proposed by the Government as a means of increasing educational performance in economically disadvantaged places and, by implication, improving the economy and social outcomes within the community in those places.
The challenge the project addresses
There remains however no rigorous or comprehensive evaluation of the impact on outcomes from the free school policy. This study will exploit the phased timing of the opening of free schools across England to apply quasi experimental methods to obtain causal estimates of the impact of free schools on a range of outcomes such as GCSE results, Higher Education participation and contact with the criminal justice system. The results of the study will help fill an evidence gap as to whether the free schools policy can help to increase opportunities and reduce disparities for people and places across the UK. This is particularly timely as the Government has recently announced the opening of a significant number of free schools within so called 'underperforming' places as a key policy of the 'levelling up' agenda.
Aims and objectives.
Aim: To generate evidence on the extent to which free schools might improve outcomes for those living in economically deprived places.
Objectives:
To estimate the impact of free schools on the education and social outcomes of those that attend them.
To develop policy implications from the work to inform future education and local economic development policy. This will include disseminating the results among relevant stakeholders and wider influencing activities.
Potential applications and benefits
This study will be of direct interest to those in charge of designing and implementing education policy (e.g., politicians, Department for Education (DfE), Regional Directors, school trusts). By better understanding the effectiveness of new forms of education provision, the research will potentially be of benefit to places whose educational underperformance partially underpins adverse economic and social outcomes. The study will also have implications for education policy internationally. The question of whether allowing new forms of provision within state funded schooling generates system improvement remains an actively debated policy question amongst academic researchers and policy makers worldwide. Our study will provide new evidence from the UK context and contribute to a richer understanding of the effects of new schooling provision on longer term outcomes.
The work will demonstrate the use of administrative data in policy research, by using the National Pupil Database (NPD) for school outcomes and the NPD-HESA linked data to investigate the effect on Higher Education participation and choices. In addition, it will showcase the UK Research and Innovation investment in administrative data access via Administrative Data Research, by using the Ministry of Justice/DfE DataFirst linked data.
The challenge the project addresses
There remains however no rigorous or comprehensive evaluation of the impact on outcomes from the free school policy. This study will exploit the phased timing of the opening of free schools across England to apply quasi experimental methods to obtain causal estimates of the impact of free schools on a range of outcomes such as GCSE results, Higher Education participation and contact with the criminal justice system. The results of the study will help fill an evidence gap as to whether the free schools policy can help to increase opportunities and reduce disparities for people and places across the UK. This is particularly timely as the Government has recently announced the opening of a significant number of free schools within so called 'underperforming' places as a key policy of the 'levelling up' agenda.
Aims and objectives.
Aim: To generate evidence on the extent to which free schools might improve outcomes for those living in economically deprived places.
Objectives:
To estimate the impact of free schools on the education and social outcomes of those that attend them.
To develop policy implications from the work to inform future education and local economic development policy. This will include disseminating the results among relevant stakeholders and wider influencing activities.
Potential applications and benefits
This study will be of direct interest to those in charge of designing and implementing education policy (e.g., politicians, Department for Education (DfE), Regional Directors, school trusts). By better understanding the effectiveness of new forms of education provision, the research will potentially be of benefit to places whose educational underperformance partially underpins adverse economic and social outcomes. The study will also have implications for education policy internationally. The question of whether allowing new forms of provision within state funded schooling generates system improvement remains an actively debated policy question amongst academic researchers and policy makers worldwide. Our study will provide new evidence from the UK context and contribute to a richer understanding of the effects of new schooling provision on longer term outcomes.
The work will demonstrate the use of administrative data in policy research, by using the National Pupil Database (NPD) for school outcomes and the NPD-HESA linked data to investigate the effect on Higher Education participation and choices. In addition, it will showcase the UK Research and Innovation investment in administrative data access via Administrative Data Research, by using the Ministry of Justice/DfE DataFirst linked data.