The research for this report was carried out jointly with the Institute of Education.
Disadvantaged pupils have higher academic attainment in London than in other regions in England and have pulled even further ahead over the past decade, particularly in inner London. This has often been referred to as the ‘London effect’. In new IFS research published today, we show that this higher level and improvement in performance is unlikely to have been driven by improvements in secondary schools. Instead, we argue that the roots of the London effect lie much earlier, with rapid improvements in pupil performance in London’s primary schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Authors
Luke Sibieta
Luke is a Research Fellow at the IFS and his general research interests include education policy, political economy and poverty and inequality.
Ellen Greaves
Ellen, who was a Senior Research Economist at IFS and is now a Research Fellow, is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute.
Lindsey Macmillan
Lindsey, an IFS Research Fellow, is a Professor of Economics and the Centre Head of Quantitative Social Science at UCL Institute of Education.
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