Book,
Estimating the Relationship between School Resources and Pupil Attainment at GCSE
DCSF, London, (2006)
Abstract
This report summarises the results from a project investigating the effect of additional school resources on pupil attainment in examinations for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). The study found that marginal increases in resources improved overall GCSE attainment for all students, but particularly for students from the bottom 60 per cent of the prior achievement distribution. Lower pupil teacher ratios were associated with significantly better overall GCSE performance. The estimated resource effects are small. After applying instrumental variables the estimates suggest that £100 per annum over 5 years of additional expenditure per pupil would be associated with an improvement of about 0.3 in the capped GCSE points score, and with an addition of about 0.05 of a grade in science GCSE. A reduction of one in the pupil teacher ratio would be associated with an improvement of up to 1.2 in the capped GCSE score and an increase of up to a quarter of a grade in science. Resource effects, both in terms of expenditure per pupil and the pupil-teacher ratio, were stronger for pupils who were in the lower quintiles of attainment at Key Stage 2.
