Can Talented Pupils with Low Socio-economic Status Shine? Evidence from a Boarding School

We study whether substituting family with school inputs for high ability pupils with low socio-economic status (SES) has an impact on achievement in the compulsory school final exams using administrative data on England. By considering a selective secondary, well-resourced boarding school admitting an unusually high share of talented pupils with low SES, we estimate the effect with propensity score matching to obtain comparable control groups in selective day schools. Our main finding is that the probability of being in the top decile of achievement in the exams increases by about 17 percentage points compared to 59% for controls, i.e. by 29%.