What are the overall effects on educational attainment of widening access to the more academic track? Research by Eric Maurin and Sandra McNally investigates using the 'natural experiment' of the grammar school system in Northern Ireland, which has survived long after its dismantlement in England.

Maurin, Eric

McNally, Sandra

English

Research Papers in Economics

CentrePiece Summer 2007
26
more academically orientated, general
education.
Specifically, we consider the
consequences of a reform that affected
access to grammar schools in Northern
Ireland, when England is used as the
comparison group. The two regions of the
UK differ in that the grammar school
system has been retained in Northern
Ireland whereas it was gradually
dismantled in England in the 1960s 
and 1970s.
The hallmark of the grammar school
system is that children are selected on the
basis of measured ability at the age of 10
or 11 whereas in the comprehensive
system, children of different abilities are
educated in the same schools. The
‘selective aspect’ of the education system
is currently under review by the new
administration in Northern Ireland.
Although the education systems of
England and Northern Ireland are also
different in other respects (for example,
the schools in the latter are mostly
segregated by religion), there are
important similarities. The two regions
have broadly the same curriculum and
they have the same examinations for
students at the ages of 16 (GCSEs) and 18
(A-levels).
The important considerations for our
research are that the examinations are
comparable across the two regions and
that the reform only occurred in one of
them. That reform consisted of widening
access to the more academic track within
Northern Ireland at the time of the ‘open
enrolment’ reform in the late 1980s. This
is the only differential change that
happened across the two regions.
Our research shows that the reform
enabled a very significant increase in the
number of Northern Irish pupils who could
attend the more academic track (grammar
schools) at the end of primary school,
between the pre-reform birth cohort
What are the overall effects on educational
attainment of widening access to the more
academic track? Research by Eric Maurin and
Sandra McNally investigates using the ‘natural
experiment’ of the grammar school system in
Northern Ireland, which has survived long after
its dismantlement in England.
I
t is difficult to know whether
widening access to schools that
provide a more academically
orientated, general education
makes a difference to average
educational achievement. Although there
has been a shift in this direction in many
OECD countries, reforms have been
difficult to evaluate because they are 
often accompanied by other important
changes to the educational system or
because they have been introduced at the
same time everywhere so there are no
comparison groups.
But the consequences of such reform
are deeply controversial and very much a
current policy issue. In particular,
opponents argue that increasing access to
the more academic track harms the quality
of education for everyone without
improving the prospects of those able to
attend the academic track. 
Our research makes use of a unique
‘natural experiment’ to identify the net
effects on overall educational outcomes of
widening access to schools that provide a
Widening access to
grammar schools:
the educational impact 
in Northern Ireland
Widening access to 
the more academic track
can generate positive 
net effects(children born in 1978) and the post-
reform birth cohort (those born in 1979).
By comparing educational outcomes in
Northern Ireland and England before and
after the reform, we can identify the effect
of widening access to the academic track
on overall educational attainment. 
Using administrative data before and
after the reform, we find that the open
enrolment reform of 1989 (which affected
the 1979 birth cohort) had a clear impact
in Northern Ireland relative to England. A
15 percentage point increase in the
number of pupils enabled to attend
grammar school (at the age of 11) was
accompanied by shifts of similar magnitude
in the number achieving five or more
GCSEs at A*-C and one or more A-level.
This suggests a strong causal effect of
expanding the more academic track on
overall educational achievement.
Just before the reform, there was a
change affecting admissions in a qualitative
way. Up to 1988, girls and boys were
assessed in different categories so that the
same percentage of entrants to the
admission test would obtain a given grade
(determining whether or not they could be
admitted to grammar school). Following a
high court ruling in June 1988, this
practice was discontinued and from then
on, girls and boys were assessed together
(affecting grammar school intakes in 1989,
the 1978 birth cohort).
This change was to the advantage of
girls since they outperformed boys on the
verbal reasoning tests that were the basis
of selection. The one-year gap between
this qualitative change to admissions and
the open enrolment reform generated
significant upward and downward shifts in
the relative proportion of girls enabled to
attend grammar school across the cohorts
born between 1977 and 1980.
We find that these shifts have been
followed by parallel shifts in girls’
subsequent relative outcomes at the ages
of 16 and 18. This confirms the
considerable effect of grammar school
entry on educational outcomes using a
different source of identification to that
used for comparing outcomes over time
between England and Northern Ireland.
We also replicate this latter analysis for
boys and girls separately and confirm our
earlier results.
Thus, whether we compare girls and
boys within Northern Ireland or make
comparisons by gender between Northern
Ireland and England, it is clear that
grammar school reforms have a strong
impact on educational outcomes.
Furthermore, the design of the educational
system – in this case, the mechanism of
entry into grammar schools – has
consequences for gender differences in
educational outcomes.
As well as considering the overall effect
of expanding the academic track on
educational outcomes, we are able to use
the same experiment to consider whether
the selective system is a contributory factor
to observed inequalities between socio-
economic groups with regard to later
educational outcomes. Specifically, we can
analyse the effect of the reform according
to whether children are eligible for free
school meals, which roughly corresponds
to families in the bottom quarter of the
income distribution.
We find that there were big differences
before and after the reform between the
probabilities of lower-income groups
entering grammar school and achieving
good educational outcomes at the ages of
16 and 18. The reform had an equal
impact on children with and without free
school meals in terms of entry to grammar
school and educational achievement at the
ages of 16 and 18.
Hence, we conclude that grammar
school attendance had no less effect on
relatively disadvantaged pupils than it had
on more advantaged pupils. Therefore, the
barriers that make it difficult for children
eligible for free school meals to enter
grammar schools in the first place (such as
lower test scores at the age of 11 because
of lower parental resources) have a long-
term effect on inequality due (in part) to
the lower probability of children on free
school meals entering grammar school.
Although this research cannot be
interpreted as evaluating the overall effects
of a comprehensive or selective (‘tracked’)
system of education, it is an example of
where widening access to the more
academic track has generated positive net
effects. It illustrates the high price that
pupils pay for being excluded from the
academic track, even when they are some
way down the ability distribution within
their birth cohort.
The study also provides clear 
evidence that selection into the more
academic track really has a causal impact –
the improvement in educational 
outcomes is not simply an artefact of 
the selection process. 
CentrePiece Summer 2007
27
This article summarises ‘Educational Effects
of Widening Access to the Academic Track:
A Natural Experiment’ by Eric Maurin and
Sandra McNally, a forthcoming Discussion
Paper from the Centre for the Economics of
Education (CEE) at CEP .
Eric Maurin is research director at the École
des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in
Paris and professor at the Paris School of
Economics. Sandra McNally is a CEP
research fellow and CEE’s deputy director.
When more pupils were
able to attend Northern
Irish grammar schools,
overall educational
attainment increased
Grammar school attendance
had no less effect on
relatively disadvantaged
pupils than on more
advantaged pupils

Widening access to grammar schools: the educational impact in Northern Ireland.

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