From a unique data-set identifying the school attended prior to university for a full cohort of UK university students, we examine the determinants of final degree classification.
We exploit the detailed school-level information and focus on the influence of school characteristics,
such as school type, on subsequent performance of students at university. We
estimate that, on average, a male (female) graduate who attended an Independent school
is 6.5 (5.4) percentage points less likely to obtain a `good' degree than is a student who
attended an LEA (that is, state-sector) school, ceteris paribus. We also find considerable
variation around this average figure across different Independent schools. We find that, for
males, the variation in the probability of attaining a `good' degree across schools can largely
be explained by the level of school fees