This paper estimates the impact of peer achievement and variance on math achievement growth. It exploits exogenous variation in peer characteristics generated at the transition to upper-secondary school in a sample of Berlin fifth-graders. Parents and schools are barely able to condition their decisions on peer characteristics since classes are newly built up from a large pool of elementary sch...

The importance of computer science education in secondary, and even primary school, has been pointed out by many authors. But too often pupils only experience ICT, both at home and at school, and confuse it with computer science. We organized a game-contest, the Kangourou of Informatics, with the aim to attract all pupils (not only the talented ones), expose them to the scientific aspects of in...

In this paper we present a multimedia-based system that facilitates teaching chemistry to pupils of Hellenic (Greek) high schools over a LAN. The system uses a variety of multimedia objects. An important aspect of the system is the central control the teacher can have over some aspects of a lesson. So, the teacher can enable the section to be taught and disable the rest ones, and design and del...

This paper exploits an unusual merit-based procedure, employed by Malawi’s Ministry of Education to select pupils into public secondary schools, to identify the e¤ect of the quality of secondary schools on both pupil learning and pupil retention. The analysis is based on unique matched institutional data that cover an entire cohort of pupils selected into Malawi’s public secondary schools. Esti...

A patient with giant cell arteritis and ischaemic optic neuropathy developed bilateral tonic pupils. This pupillary abnormality may result from ischaemia of the ciliary ganglia. Despite the propensity for patients with giant cell arteritis to develop vascular occlusions in the eye and orbit, tonic pupils have rarely been described, and several reasons for this are proposed. The arteries supplyi...

There are increasing concerns about children’s well-being in the UK, their behaviour, and the low academic attainment of a large fraction of the population. The Every Child Matters agenda stressed schools’ potential and duty to promote pupils’ wellbeing. In September 2007, three local authorities (South Tyneside, Manchester and Hertfordshire) piloted the UK Resilience Programme with Year 7 pupi...

Alternative School Day (ASD) is a project for adolescents who have difficulties in several areas. Nine pupils (14-16-years-old), their parents and teachers were interviewed during autumn and spring. The pupils attended ASD one day per week. All of them had a working-class background. The study focuses on the school as a middle-class arena, and for pupils with other class background, it represen...

We recruited four classes, each of about 30 pupils aged 13-14 years, from four schools in the Edinburgh area. We visited the classes three times: to introduce the study and distribute consent forms and information for pupils and parents or guardians; to allocate accelerometers (instruments used to measure vertical movement); and to collect accelerometers and issue questionnaires. Inclusion in t...