Do Performance Targets Affect Behaviour? Evidence from Discontinuities in Test Scores in England∗

Performance targets are ubiquitous in all areas of an individual’s life, such as education, jobs, sport competitions and charity donations. In this paper I assess whether meeting performance targets in tests at school has an effect on students’ subsequent behaviour. This is helpful to test whether motivation and effort by students, parents and schools, that the targets may induce, may deter rather than inducing risky behaviour. I address potentially spurious correlations between test scores and students’ behaviour by exploiting a regression discontinuity design in tests and a linked dataset of test scores and subsequent behaviour in compulsory education in England. I find that meeting a target that the government sets for students at age 11 has a negative but non-significant effect on proxies for risky behaviour, such as the probability of absence from school or of a police warning. The effects are heterogeneous as they vary by students’ ability, gender, parents’ education level and type of risky behaviour. Overall, the research design offers a valuable test to assess unintended behavioural consequences that meeting the target or failing to meet it may lead to. Probit estimates show that meeting a target decreases the chances of risky behaviour. Regression discontinuity estimates tend to show a non-significant effect, although some of them are significant and smaller than Probit estimates. JEL Classification: C21, I20, I21, I28