The Impact of School Inputs on Student Performance: An Empirical Study of Private Schools in the United Kingdom

In this article, we report the results of an empirical study of the impact of school inputs on pupils` performance in private (independent) schools in the United Kingdom. We use a new school-level panel dataset constructed from information provided by the Independent Schools Information Service (ISIS). We show a consistent negative relationship between the pupil-teacher ratio at a school and the average examination results at that school. Our estimates indicate that the relationship persists even when we are estimating added-value models conditional on previous exam results. The results are noteworthy in comparison with studies for the state sector, relatively few of which have found a consistent and significant effect.