Competition, Choice and Primary School Performance

Government education policy in England, like in the US, has been increasingly geared towards increasing competitiveness between schools, at both primary and secondary levels. Theory suggests that in a world where parental preference over school quality has a key role to play in school admissions, competition for pupils between neighbouring schools could provide performance incentives, and parental choice could lead to allocative efficiency gains. Although the economic rationale for choice and competition is clear, most of the evidence that exists relates to the US and there is rarely an attempt to distinguish between the two concepts. We exploit a large and detailed pupil census, with information on pupil and school locations, to establish whether primary schools in England that are in a position of potential competition over pupil admissions perform better than those that are in a more geographically isolated, monopolistic situation. We also explore whether pupils who live in places where a wide range of choices is available achieve more than those whose choices seem more limited. In simple least squares regression models, we find a positive, but small association between pupil performance and competition indices; however, this could be related to endogenous school location or pupil sorting. Instrumental variables results based on admissions district boundaries do in fact suggest that there might very little gains to be had from improving pupil choice and school competition; indeed, it is only in faith schools that competition seems to be linked to performance, and even then only in terms of their competitive position in relation to other faith schools. JEL