Evaluation of Aimhigher:Excellence Challenge: The early impact of Aimhigher:Excellence Challenge on pre-16 outcomes: an economic evaluation

<p>This paper looks at the impact of the Aimhigher:Excellence Challenge programme on pupils who have been exposed to it for one year. Both linear regression and propensity score matching techniques are used to compare to outcomes of individuals in Aimhigher:Excellence Challenge schools with those in a set of </p><p>comparison schools. In both cases, time-constant factors that influence the outcomes </p><p>we are looking at are differenced out using a 'difference in differences' methodology.</p> </p><p><p>The Aimhigher:Excellence Challenge intervention seeks to encourage more young people to participate in tertiary education. Our analysis considers two year </p><p>groups - those who have just finished year 9 or year 11. We find evidence that being </p><p>part of the Aimhigher:Excellence Challenge programme (in Excellence in Cities </p><p>areas) leads to an improvement in the proportion (by 4.6 percentage points) of year 9 </p><p>pupils attaining levels 4, 5 or 6 in Key Stage 3 mathematics in year 9, but that this year </p><p>group do not show a statistically higher proportion intending to participate in higher </p><p>education. The year 11 analysis does show a higher proportion of pupils intending to </p><p>take part in Higher Education (by 3.9 percentage points) as a result of the Aimhigher:Excellence Challenge policy. There is also a significant improvement in nearly all </p><p>measures of this group's GCSE results, with an average improvement on the total </p><p>points scored of 2.5. Our matching analysis acts as a robustness check on the </p><p>regression results; we find that matching shows similar or larger estimates for the </p><p>impact of Aimhigher: Excellence Challenge on exam results, but lower for the </p><p>education intentions.</p> </p><p><p>In the last part of the paper we show the range of cost per pupil that would be </p><p>consistent with Aimhigher: Excellence Challenge passing a cost benefit analysis, on </p><p>the basis of the increased (gross) wages due to either a 1.8 percentage point or a 3.9 </p><p>percentage point increase in participation in Higher Education. We find that for the </p><p>policy to yield a rate of return of at least 3.5%, it would need to cost no more than </p><p>£537 per pupil if the impact of the policy was to increase HE participation by 3.9 </p><p>percentage points, and no more than £248 per pupil if the impact of the policy was to </p><p>increase HE participation by 1.8 percentage points.</p>