Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/141586 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9827
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper investigates the introduction of free universal secondary education in England and Wales in 1944. It focuses on its effects in relation to a prime long-term goal of pre-war Boards of Education. This was to open secondary school education to children of all social backgrounds on equal terms. Adopting a difference-in-difference estimation approach, we do not find any evidence that boys and girls from less well-off home backgrounds displayed improved chances of attending selective secondary schools. Nor, for the most part, did they show increased probabilities of gaining formal school qualifications. One possible exception in this latter respect relates to boys with unskilled fathers.
Subjects: 
school qualifications
1944 Education Act
free secondary education
family background
JEL: 
I21
I24
I28
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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