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Abstract The authors study the relationship between results obtained in examinations for the General Certificate of Education at Advanced and Advanced Supplementary (A/AS) level and those obtained by the same students two years earlier in examinations for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). They used comprehensive data on four cohorts examined between 1994 and 1997 to build a multilevel, longitudinal model of student progress. It was found that progress differs between males and females, and between students of different ages, and that the average GCSE performance of the students in an establishment is a significant predictor of individual progress. Once establishments are matched on this measure, and students are matched on their own GCSE performance, the effects of most establishment types are substantially reduced: in particular, the average progress of students in maintained grammar schools does not differ significantly from that of students in maintained comprehensive schools. Less stability over time was found in the usual residual estimates of the relative effectiveness of institutions than has been found in earlier studies.
Yang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.