In brief: urban schools: does money make a difference?

This research paper is motivated by a long tail at the bottom of the educational distribution, educational inequality between those from high and low socio-economic groups and the question as to what role an increase in school resources has in changing all this. The issue about whether investing more money in schools is effective has long been controversial in the academic literature. It is also a controversial policy issue in this time of public expenditure cuts and reforms to educational finance. With regard to the latter, the Pupil Premium is an important new policy introduced this year – and this paper is useful for considering the potential effects.