Shqiponja Telhaj

Non‐Native Speakers of English in the Classroom: What are the Effects on Pupil Performance?

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of children going to school in England who do not speak English as a first language. We investigate whether this has an impact on the educational outcomes of native English speakers at the end of primary school. We show that the negative correlation observed in the raw data is mainly an artefact of selection: non-native speakers are more likely to attend school with disadvantaged native speakers. We attempt to identify a causal impact of changes in the percentage of non-native speakers within the year group. In general, our results suggest zero effect and rule out negative effects.

Are Schools Drifting Apart? Intake Stratification in English Secondary Schools

The issue of social segregation in schools has seen a recent resurgence of interest, in the light of policies that have sought to expand parental choice. Most research has focused on segregation along lines of ethnicity or social background. Yet, the real consideration in the back of peoples minds seems to be stratification along lines of pupil ability. This paper looks explicitly at this issue using the population of pupils entering secondary schools in England from 1996 to 2002. The study highlights wide disparities between peer-group ability in different schools. However, contrary to popular opinion, almost nothing has changed over these years in terms of the way pupils of different age-11 abilities are sorted into different secondary schools.

Increasing within‐school competition: a case for department level performance indicators?

The authors investigate the size and stability of departmental effects in English secondary schooling during a period in which extensions to parental choice and annual publication of school performance tables had significantly increased competitive pressures on schools. Their database of nearly 450 English secondary schools enables them to investigate departments in terms of both their unadjusted and value‐added average students’ performance in national examinations. They are interested in the nature of within‐school competition and concentrate upon two subjects, geography and history, which were optional subjects in each of these schools. In general, they find that relative departmental performance varies significantly over time and that few departments manage to persistently out‐perform the other subject in their school. They conclude that given the instability of relative departmental performance, publication of department‐level performance indicators is unlikely to generate strong incentives for departments to raise their effort and effectiveness.

Barriers to Entry and their impact on Firms' performance in Albania

Nearly 50 years after World War II, Albania was the most isolated country in Central and Eastern Europe. It had an extremely centralised economy and a poorly performing state —which was the only owner of the property created by the contribution of generations of Albanian people (Clunies-Ross and Sudar 1998(). Political changes started in 1990, when the first opposition party, the Democratic Party, was created. In 1991, following serious riots in main cities, a coalition government was created. Its economic programme contained measures of macroeconomic stabilisation, liberalisation of prices and foreign trade, privatisation and the development of convertible currency. However, the coalition government could not embrace reforms and the disagreements over these policies led to the withdrawal of the Democratic Party from the coalition government in December 1991, and a halt in the implementation of the 1991 programme. Only in 1992, after new elections, when the Democratic Party gained a majority, did the government start to implement the programme of transition in Albania which, by then, was the last country in Central and Eastern Europe to embark on economic transformation.