Eyles, Andrew;
(2024)
Essays on Social Mobility and Education Reform.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
In this dissertation, I use quasi-experimental and machine learning techniques across five separate studies. These studies concern the measurement of social mobility, the determinants of social mobility, and the effectiveness of a large-scale school reform program aimed at increasing prospects for disadvantaged children. Chapter 1 uses rich data and house prices and their relationship to wealth, to estimate intergenerational wealth persistence in the UK. In line with intergenerational income transmission, it is shown that the intergenerational persistence of wealth has strengthened over time. Chapter 2 uses cutting edge techniques from the machine learning explainability literature to understand the determinants of upward mobility for two UK birth cohorts. Cognitive ability in adolescence and educational outcomes are shown to be the key drivers of upward mobility. These variables act as sufficient statistics for a wide range of variables related to family background, socioemotional skills, and parental time investment. Chapter 3 looks at the effectiveness of sponsored academies. It is shown that this radical reform gave already existing schools – particularly those serving disadvantaged pupils - greater operational autonomy. This led to large performance improvements for attendees especially for those in urban schools. Chapter 4 studies the scaling up of the academies programme to primary schools. Unlike early academies, primary academies led to little performance improvements. Schools that gain academy status make use of their greater fiscal freedom, but do not invest in well- known drivers of school improvement. Chapter 5 studies how academies affect the labour market for school leaders. Despite the level and variance of head teacher remuneration increasing rapidly in line with the growth of autonomous schools, only a weak link between the two is found. Schools of all types increasingly pay leaders outside of mandated pay scales reflecting a greater liberalisation of the UK head teacher labour market.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Essays on Social Mobility and Education Reform |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2024. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10194315 |
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