%0 Journal Article
%T Incentivising Specific Combinations of Subjects ¨C Does It Make                     Any Difference to University Access?
%A Alice Sullivan
%A Jake Anders
%A Morag Henderson
%A Vanessa Moulton
%J National Institute Economic Review
%@ 1741-3036
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/002795011824300113
%X A major part of the 2010¨C15 UK government's education reforms in England was a focus on the curriculum that pupils study from ages 14¨C16. Most high profile was the introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) performance measure for schools, incentivising study of ¡°subjects the Russell Group identifies as key for university study¡± (Gibb, 2011). However, there does not appear to be good quantitative evidence about the importance of studying such a set of subjects, per se. This paper sets out to analyse this question, considering whether otherwise similar young people who study specific sets of subjects (full set for EBacc-eligibility, two or more sciences, foreign languages, applied subjects) to age 16 have different probabilities of entering university, and specifically a high-status university. It compares results from regression modelling and propensity score matching, taking advantage of rich survey data from a recent cohort of young people in England. We find that conditional differences in university entry attributable to subject choice are, at most, small
%K English Baccalaureate
%K accountability measures
%K university access
%K I20
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/002795011824300113