The joint evaluation of multiple educational policies: the case of specialist schools and Excellence in Cities policies in Britain

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Governments frequently introduce education policy reforms to improve the educational outcomes of pupils. These often have simultaneous effects on pupils because they are implemented in the same schools and at the same time. In this paper, we evaluate the relative and multiple overlapping effects of two flagship British educational policies – the Excellence in Cities initiative and the specialist schools policy. We compare the estimates from multi-level cross-sectional and difference-indifferences (DID) matching models. The policy impacts estimated from cross-sectional models are typically positive, quite large and rise over time. The specialist schools policy had a much greater impact on test scores. However, DID matching estimates of the overlapping policies show an increase in GCSE test scores by only 0.5– 1 point. We interpret this result as a small causal effect arising from complementarities between the two policies. 1. Introduction A perennial, and almost, universal problem facing governments and policy makers around the world is how to most effectively raise educational performance among secondary school pupils. Britain is no exception. In fact, successive British governments have introduced numerous reforms to the education system, and simultaneously pumped considerable financial resources into the educational system in an attempt to improve the educational outcomes of pupils.