Gonzalez Parrao, Maria Constanza;
(2020)
Do school admission policies provide equal opportunities? Three empirical studies on educational inequality.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The present thesis focuses on the topic of education inequality at the school level. It aims to explore how different school admission policies can hinder or promote equality of opportunities in education. To achieve this, the first research chapter, co-authored with Gabriel Gutierrez and Alison O'Mara-Eves, serves to contextualise from an international perspective the extent and impact of randomised school admissions. Through a systematic search, this paper synthesises the evidence with a narrative summary and a meta-analysis of the effects that school systems or programs with random admissions have on academic and non-academic areas of students. The results focus on the countries and types of schools or programs that use lottery admissions, as well as on the purpose, implementation and evaluation of these admissions in the available literature. The other two papers examine the relationship between education inequality and admission policies in Chile’s school system. Under the premise that the more the schools can shape their student body through the admission process, the more segregated the students will be, the second research chapter looks into selective admissions in primary and secondary education. Following a panel of schools and using a flexible differences-in-differences approach and a linear regression model with school and time fixed effects, this paper evaluates the effect of using different selective admission mechanisms on student academic and school socioeconomic outcomes. Finally, the third research chapter looks into the case of a new school offering primary and secondary education. Using a unique dataset and exploiting lottery admissions to allocate the entire student body, this paper estimates the effect of this educational program on student outcomes. In the context of a school system transitioning to a national admission scheme including a random mechanism, this research provides suggestive evidence of the challenges that new schools could face under the admissions reform.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Do school admission policies provide equal opportunities? Three empirical studies on educational inequality |
| Event: | UCL (University College London) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2020. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/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. |
| Keywords: | Education policy, School admissions, Quantitative research methods |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10096351 |
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