Grade surprise and the decision to stay on into post-compulsory education

Abstract

This article argues that an important influence on boys' decisions to stay on into post-compulsory education is the attainment of maths grades that differ from expectations.

Keywords:

• bivariate probit
• post-compulsory education

JEL Classification:

• I21
• C35

Notes

¹ The study collected no measure of parental educational or financial background. We attempt to control for these effects by including two variables that capture the income levels and inequality within the student's 4-digit postcode residential area.

² More recent data are not available for variables that are at the core of this study. Although changes have occurred in the UK post-compulsory education market over the last decade (see Thomas and Webber (2009) for a brief review), the data set remains one of the most detailed and useful for this study.

³ Students who were in post-compulsory education were interviewed in class, while those who left education were sent the questionnaire by post. There was attrition in the response rate for the second questionnaire, with those who left education being less likely to return completed questionnaires, suggesting a possible bias towards those in education.

⁴ Greene (2003) showed that the density function is given by .

⁵ Similar grade surprise variables were examined for English language but were not identified as being statistically significant. Further research could identify why such differences across subjects exist. One suggestion is that understanding maths requires sequential learning, which may be less important for other subjects such as English language.