Expanding access to elite education

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The secondary school system in Northern Ireland involves the distribution of students across a small set of elite schools (or grammar schools) and a much larger set of non-elite schools. Elite schools select about a third of students who obtain the best results at a national ability test taken at the end of primary school (at age 11). In 1989, they were required to accept pupils up to a new (larger) admission number determined only by “physical capacity”, where “physical capacity” was defined on a school-by-school basis by the Northern Ireland Education Department. From one cohort to the next, the number of pupils enabled to attend elite schools increased by about 15%.

For exactly the same cohort of pupils, the authors observes a strong increase in the overall number of students achieving good qualifications in the compulsory (national) examination taken at age 16 and in the number of students achieving good qualifications in the academic track at a later stage (ie A levels, at age 18), which opens the way to university education. When comparing local areas within Northern Ireland, they also find that cohorts in areas that were more affected by the reform became much more successful in national examinations than cohorts in areas that were less affected.

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